The Ultimate Disguise
by androsjanicek
Summary: Holmes and Watson become embroiled in a plot to expose London's clandestine men's clubs. Watson discloses the very secret dealings he's had in this sector of town, and Holmes uncovers the identity of someone they think they know well.
1. Chapter 1

During the period in which I was nursing my hurt over Sherlock Holmes' inconsiderate behavior, I came home to him standing before the mirror while scrubbing off some of the greasepaint from one of his disguises. He said to my reflection, "Watson, I have something I should like to tell you."

"Oh?" I asked frostily, still irritated that he would have considered making me the caretaker of his false lovesickness. "The truth, I hope."

"Of course, my friend." He turned around with false whiskers still dotting his face. "Do you remember when Bruno was here and you asked why I was going to Treacher's?"

"Oh." The syllable dripped with distaste.

"It might cheer you to know that I've been investigating him."

"Finally, a worthy villain," I said drily.

"Why do you dislike the man so, Doctor? It is most unlike you." By now Holmes' face was his own and he disappeared into his room to regain his clothing as well.

I followed in that direction and stood near the door. "He's simply a revolting man, Holmes, how else can I explain it?" I searched for words. "He has rather pointy ears—"

"You would condemn a man on that basis?" Holmes called.

"I was going to say it's the net effect of the ears, and the blinking, deep-set eyes and that straw or strawberry hair—I know not what it is—along with his short stature and the wide-shouldered jackets he favors. It all gives the effect that he's a small, off-ginger bat."

Holmes chortled from his chamber.

"But the hair color is unsettling. It gives me a sense of unhealth—that it was once red and has turned lighter from some kind of nutritional deficiency." There was a banging of drawers. "Or even worse, that his hair owes all of its color to all the dirt and tobacco smoke it's picked up from that loathsome tavern he never leaves."

Holmes emerged in his dressing gown and a light suit. "Dr. Watson! That is exceedingly unkind."

I followed him into the sitting area. "Some people one simply doesn't like," I replied. "If you don't require my reasoning, do not ask for it."

He handed me a box of especially nice Turkish cigarettes, which he must have picked up for my benefit, and I took one. "Mother Treacher, men of my set call him. Do you know why? Because he is considered to be the guarantee of safety, the connection that brings friendly cafes and cooperative hotels into a network of discretion."

"He spins his web like a spider, more like. The man could be composing a blackmail demand against you as we speak," I said.

Holmes stared at me. "If I were to lose my reputation, it would not be from the workings of Mr. Alphonse Treacher, as he is currently known."

"Then why are you investigating this saint?"

"Because he asked me to!" Holmes sat back and exhaled. "And because I would rather not have my own name ruined because of some other, as yet unidentified person, who has infiltrated his circle of trust."

"My dear Holmes, do you really think you are in danger?" Mycroft thought Holmes' associations to be a great risk. But then, his older brother had never loved, nor had he been to a card game in the back room of Giorgio's Café with some very congenial chaps.

Holmes continued. "I am investigating Treacher to find out who has managed to get past his admirable grasp of the human physiognomy. He's been in London for five years in the same place with no major problems because he only allows into his inner circle those who have been looked over by him personally."

"You've taken me to many establishments where one only need know the password. Perhaps this supposed intruder got in this way," I suggested.

"You're a bit of a special case, Watson. Every place you've entered has been with my imprimatur—but before I declared you an honorary member, even you were shut out by café owners. Still, the way proprietors manage these 'friends of the select' may vary." He gazed off into space. "It is possible that this person—I assume a man—has slowly worked his way in, layer by layer, into Treacher's world until three weeks ago, the unthinkable happened."

"One would not like to consider what is unthinkable for the likes of Mr. Treacher," I remarked.

"Over the course of a week, three of the couples to whom Treacher gave the chit were interrupted in their privacy by members of Scotland Yard, who knew exactly the hotels where they could be found."

"I suppose there is no chance that three different establishments would suddenly have qualms about their arrangement with Mr. Treacher," I said, though I knew better. These hotels were—either by principle or prudence—absolutely discreet, as no one would help me locate Holmes and Bruno when I was looking for him.

"None at all, Doctor. There is one weak point in this chit system—Mr. Treacher looks over his potential clients from the relative publicity of his tavern. This was how Madam Yvette saw me, if you remember. I have found out since that many careful pairs spend some time becoming familiar faces at the locale, and only then, when their presence is no longer remarkable, do they occasionally approach the proprietor for a chit. And Mr. Treacher prefers to give his blessing to men he knows well, so my situation with Bruno was rather exceptional."

"I would assume that the man has spun his filaments and attached them to everyone who frequents hat tavern of his," I said with distaste. "He would tug on anyone who disturbed that dubious peace he maintains among the city's criminal element."

Holmes looked at me, surprised. "That is precisely it. When I went to intimidate Madam Yvette into keeping the information about me to herself, I found it had already been done very efficiently by Mr. Treacher. Normally he takes an interest in the services brothels provide for men of like tastes, but he can 'tug,' as you say, the other way, and threaten to expose a madam's complete dossier of infractions to the law. But I've not told you this before, Dr. Watson."

"Everyone knows that Mr. Treacher's place is a veritable 'Who's Who' of every sin in London," I said drily. "You first heard of him when looking for a drugs network, and then again when an aristocratic young lady recurred to that man for help in running away from an arranged marriage, which he did by setting her up in a brothel. Yes, I've since found every mention of the man in our archives, and he's been named in the context of many infractions."

"Though never violent ones," Holmes was quick to point out. "You are absolutely correct, however, that Mr. Treacher's business enterprises are known to be efficient and discreet. He maintains this balance because of his admirable grasp of human expressions. No one will stay in his rowdy yet peaceful public house for more than a minute if he senses something wrong in his face."

Holmes laughed. "I, myself, have been ejected by his ruffians a few times. Once I remarked to a man, 'That's a very attractive cravat you're wearing,' and the next minute Mr. Treacher was grinning at me while his goons transported me to the street. It's not been comfortable for him to host someone of my observational skills in a place where no one wishes to be observed, but after a few such incidents we have worked out a sort of truce," the detective claimed with some pride.

I trusted the little businessman not at all, and wished that Sherlock Holmes hadn't invested all of his talents in forming some liaison with Mr. Treacher. Thus, I tried to return to the case, if that's what it was.

"You're saying the only way someone could have known to look for these three couples was if he witnessed the chit being passed from hand to hand," I said to my companion.

"Precisely. People talk to the proprietor for all sorts of reasons, but a man who was an accepted presence in that place could maneuver himself into proximity with the owner, such that he actually saw the chit bestowed on the three couples."

"Assuming this were true, the authorities would have to know which couples were seeking refuge in which hotel. That's quite a lot to arrange," I objected.

"Not at all, Watson. These inns can be found by word of mouth, as you found them." He smiled at the memory of me following him around the city in order to understand his relation with Bruno. "But unless the authorities wish to rouse the inhabitant of every single bed in a place, they must have precise information about which room to target. They would need a very good description of a guest, a person whom someone other than the hotel's complicit employees might have noticed."

"And you're saying three such memorable couples were found in their rented beds," I surmised.

Holmes nodded. "One pair involved a very tall man, evidently of soldierly bearing, with a noticeable limp, in the company of a much shorter man. Instantly recognizable. The next couple was two very young men, overdressed for the occasion, one of them in ill-fitting clothes that had been borrowed from the other. A young lord and his servant, as it turned out. Again, the contrast was eye-catching."

"And the third," I prompted.

"The third was a man we both know," he mentioned a name from the theater district. "He brought his chosen companion for a regular tryst, and they were torn from this refuge by the pounding of a policeman's fist on their door, and theirs alone."

"And his face would be easily marked by anyone who follows the theater news," I finished with a stab of sympathy for this nice young man who had always been happy to furnish me with the gossip about the latest plays.

"Thankfully, a trained actor is quick to improvise. Before the door was broken in, he and his friend were dressed and in the midst of a scuffle. 'I told you this is my room, you thief!' they were each exclaiming to the other. Since neither would admit he had done anything wrong except have the misfortune of being assigned a room that had been mistakenly booked twice by the management, they received a warning and no more."

"Whew," I let out my breath. "That was very quick thinking."

"But the other two couples were not so fortunate, and Mr. Treacher is not about to sit idly by while it happens again. You can imagine that the two hotels where arrests were made bowed out of the lucrative arrangement for the time being, and the few other complicit establishments are drastically cutting down on their clandestine services while their fees have become exorbitant. Each hotel told Treacher that there had been several more inquiries—by men in plain clothes—about couples who had been given refuge, but the employees are too discreet to divulge information and the couples were too indescript to have garnered attention. And needless to say, attempts by other male pairs of clandestine policmeen seeking lodging without the benefit of the chit were summarily turned away."

All this intrigue over temporary lodging seemed excessive. "I should not like you and Bruno to have been discovered the night you were forced to take such a measure, Holmes," I admitted. "Are these three the only incidents that have occurred?"

"No, Watson, not at all," laughed the detective. "Have you not noticed the increasing number of little skits and performances being offered by the actors you so admire?"

"I had not noticed any change. They're inventive people who like to express themselves."

"And they have been encouraged to do so away from the official theaters that employ them, for fear that some of the more irregular offerings will taint the shows in which they perform. I should inform you, Doctor, that there are all manner of performances that are not to my taste, and to which I have never brought you."

I laughed at my friend thinking himself worldly before a soldier. "Taken as a whole, my experience with risqué entertainment far exceeds your own, old man, though it is true I have seen little in your new community. But I didn't know they were being shut down."

"Yes, Watson. There is great discomfort all around. I have also discovered that establishments with secret back rooms are being inspected by the authorities, but most unsettling is the fact that men going to or from one of Treacher's hotels have claimed they felt as though they were followed."

"It must be a morality crusade," I said. "Though the last time the police attempted such a thing, it was all over the papers."

"None of my connections at the Yard will admit it, but this must be an exceedingly well organized campaign," he the great detective agreed with some discomfort.

I paused. "How long have you been aware of this?"

Holmes scoffed. "You may think my brain has gone soft along with the melting of my heart, but my visits to the secret side of London are at least as much self-preservation as enjoyment. I have turned my specialized antennae upon these corners and their inhabitants," he leaned back in his chair and ran his hand through his hair, "And I have seen them to be men like myself. Wishing only to be themselves, alone or in company."

"Then I postulate the interloper you seek is genuinely a member of the guild, so to speak. This was how he managed to evade both you and Treacher. Though why a man with your tastes should wish to end London's havens for the same makes no sense," was my contributuion.

"Excellent, Watson. This I believe to be a very good theory, although it doesn't go much farther than that.

"Allow me to continue the results of my investigations. On a few evenings I have been out and suddenly had the sense that something was not correct. One night a small fire broke out—yes, yes, it could be from a stray cigar end, though it did blaze up very quickly. But the fire forced everyone out onto the street. If people were not so skilled at making haste from their amusements, the police who arrived on the heels of the fire brigade could have asked what all these men were doing, grouped in a supposed storeroom that was comfortably appointed with benches, one of which I had claimed for my own that evening."

"You could have been seen," I said, horrified at the implications.

"Tut tut. A consulting detective always has some case as an excuse," Holmes put his feet on the table and exhaled before continuing:

"Then there has been blackmail, if it can be called that."

"Yes, you've told me you've helped out quite a few people who have been targeted in this way," I interrupted, "But we both know that this is a hazard for anyone with inconvenient romantic attachments."

"One of these clients you sent my way, and her attachment was very inconvenient for you, as I remember," my friend twinkled.

I winced at the reminder. There are some young ladies of the artistic circles who accompany male friends to these clubs, much as I accompany Holmes. When one of these young women became friendly with me, I was dazzled by her beauty and wit, so much so that I did not realize she was of the Sapphic persuasion and trying to tell me of a blackmail attempt and her request for the most discreet help.

"Several people have brought me messages saying something like, 'You were seen going in the private lounge of the Revel last Tuesday evening. A friend.' Or, 'It would be a shame for your employer at W.W. Petrie to find out about your special companion. A friend,'" said Sherlock Holmes. "Always typewritten from the same machine."

"And this followed with an attempt to extort money, of course," I completed.

"No, Doctor. That is what is so curious. Money is never mentioned. The intent could be to let these persons know they are being watched; that their activities have been registered and could be divulged at any time. Or it could be genuinely to warn them."

"A considerate watcher? Wouldn't the most considerate thing be not to watch others' activities?"

"Perhaps. Such messages could also be a subtle but effective way at destroying the island of relative security maintained by the man you so despise, Mr. Treacher."

Holmes withdrew an envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to me. The typewritten address read, "Mr. Sherlock Holmes, 221 B Baker Street."

"'You were seen on Thursday night exiting the Winslow in company. A friend,'" I read aloud.

"What were you doing last Thursday, Dr. Watson?" came the soft question.

"Was it this past Thursday that we were at the Winslow?" I tried to recall when we had last attended an exclusive Shakespeare night that was offered by certain aficionados. "Of course it was. But many people interested in the theater attend that private party."

This was one of the delightful practices I had discovered in accompanying Holmes to the hidden cafes in London. Actors would get together and have a sort of contest—complete with wagers—in which they would do impressions of the most diverse people and things. It was fascinating to watch, and completely harmless. "Why should someone monitor that gathering, Holmes? And with whom did you leave?"

"With you, of course, Doctor," he said impatiently. "Do you think I am a fool? You are the only person with whom I ever leave any social activity. Bruno and I travel quite separately when he is in the city."

"Oh. Well then I'd like to see someone extort you about your torrid affair with me," I laughed.

My friend's expression was serious. "And I should not like to see the reverse happen with you. Your patients might not find it so amusing."

It took a moment for that to register as a real possibility. "But that's ridiculous! We've been colleagues for years. The whole city knows that."

"And we share quarters, as is documented in the stories people devour with their afternoon tea. I was going to ask you for your invaluable assistance very soon, my friend, for the case has matured to a point that I know what to ask of you. But when this letter arrived this morning—Charing Cross postmark, though each one comes from a different sector of town—I knew it was my duty to make you consider all of your actions related to me very closely."

"You've involved me in many marginally legal escapades, Holmes, and you should know I never shrink from what I think is right. I'm not going to be intimidated from playing cards with whom I like, or hearing the behind-the-scenes gossip about an upcoming production of 'Midsummer Night's Dream'! And I certainly shan't begin a practice of us leaving an evening's entertainment separately. How ridiculous! I've done nothing wrong!"

The detective was watching me quietly. "And neither have you," I added. "We've certainly done nothing wrong together!"

He finally gave a slight smile. "Yes, anyone who has ever seen Bruno hurling daggers of possessiveness from his eyes knows who holds the claim on me. Thankfully, he and I see each other too seldom to do much damage to our reputations. But I have written to him, asking that he stay away until I solve this case. He could lose everything he's working for once again if he were to be the one observed in the wrong venues with me."

His voice ended on a muted note.

"I am sorry that this siege upon private pastimes might interfere with your rare visits," I said. "How can I help you solve this thing?"

"You are a true friend, Doctor." Then he brightened with the telling of his case once more.

"The other incidents were more subtle, often involving a feeling of a threat never realized. Once I was at the tavern underneath the Green Elephant tavern. Some men brought a violin, a concertina, a few other instruments, as there are musical gentlemen who frequent that place, and I have listened to very fine music over a drink. But that night, someone suggested dancing. I couldn't say for sure whose idea it was, what with all the noise, and no one else was sure afterwards either. But I had the sense that this establishment, which is quite close to a main thoroughfare, was not a good location in which to put one's arms around another man and have a waltz."

Men's combinations could be readily understood on an anatomical level, but this aesthetic activity made no sense to me at all. "But how would two men—?"

Holmes nodded. "These things can be managed very gracefully, Watson, from what I hear. For whatever reason, no couples got up to dance, although there were challenges to be the first. I could not say who was watching, but I had the sense of a disaster nearly averted. That the dancing was part of a design to catch men in an incriminating position, and a signal would have been given. For there is no charge to be lodged against a group of men drinking and even playing cards, whether it is in a closet or a basement—though the proprietors might be responsible for allowing people to congregate in an unauthorized place."

"But if the authorities were to burst in upon men wrapped in each other's arms, there would be no explaining it away," I completed. "Good Lord, why would anyone take such a foolish risk?"

Holmes stood up. "Mrs. Hudson. Thank you so much for the early dinner," he said, taking the tray.

"You said it would be a late evening full of hungry work for you and the doctor, and he's put in a full day of honest work, for one." Mrs. Hudson fussed around the parlor, emptying ashtrays and making her presence felt while we started on the simple fare. Holmes gave me supplicating looks until we were alone and could continue our sensitive conversation.

"You will forgive me for counting on your help me this evening, Watson. The plan is already in motion, though of course you can halt it at any time."

While we ate, I heard what would be expected of me. Now that I began to understand the danger surrounding my old friend—and several new friends—with these anonymous letters, I was quite sure that any endeavor to help them qualified as just.

"You understand that I must ask this of you precisely because no accusations against you would hold," Holmes said as we pushed away our plates and smoked a fortifying cigarette each.

"Absolutely, Holmes. I'll think of it as a way to see things through your eyes," I said with a reassurance I didn't feel.

"Good fellow. Say hello to Mr. Treacher for me."

When I approached that infamous den, the revelry was just beginning. "Dr. Watson," he shouted over the din. "I'm so glad you've chosen to grace my haven with a visit."

My face felt hot and I only wished for this stage to be over.

"There, there, you can feel completely at home among friends," he said, this sincere kindness only serving to make me more nervous. He gestured and someone brought me a glass of surprisingly good whiskey.

I'd already picked out the young man in a very fashionable suit—one might almost say too fashionable—and even more affected boots, who was to be my companion for the evening. A young slip of a thing with a shock of wavy dark hair and a small, full mouth, just as Holmes had described, was standing somewhat away from the general noise.

We stared at each other in a matched disfavor and I edged towards him.

"Mr. Limstock, you are most kind to assist Mr. Holmes in his investigation."

"Mr. Holmes told me all I had to do was take the chit from Treacher and go to the hotel with you for a short while. That's all," he said more pointedly than I thought necessary.

"You needn't fear anything from me, young man," I said drily.

"No?" He seemed rather insulted, and we drank in silence.

Finally, I could stand it no more. "What could Holmes possibly have over you that you agreed to do this thankless deed? I frequently do all manner of foolishness for his investigations, but this?"

Someone at the other end of the room sang a few bars and several voices laughed as music struck up.

"Well, er, I was hoping to get to know your friend, Doctor," Mr. Limstock said shyly.

"Get to know Sherlock Holmes?" The idea was risible, even taking into account that it had been accomplished once before. "Many aspects of the man remain a mystery, even to me."

"That's just it." My co-conspirator's eyes were shining. "I've always admired Mr. Holmes from your stories. He's so decisive and strong. And when I met him in person and found him to be so rough and sculptural at the same time—"

I did not like my stories being read as romances. I said sharply, "You could sooner walk across the Thames as woo Sherlock Holmes." The boy looked crushed, and I amended. "Almost all of his pleasures are of the mind. His one dalliance was with a man of equal brilliance. Don't take it so hard—I don't hold myself in their company either, lad."

Seeing that Treacher had emerged from one of his dark corners, I made a motion to him. He came over and looked at me and my companion very closely, as if he had never seen us before. It was a singularly uncomfortable experience, even though the man knew all about Holmes' plan to try and discern who was observing these private hotel exchanges.

The tavern keeper pulled out a green chit and scrawled something on it. "You know how this works, don't you my boy?" he asked Mr. Limstock.

"Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Treacher." The boy took me by the elbow and drew me out onto the street.

"Which hotel is it to be?" I asked.

"I don't know. We have to go to the newsagent's down the street. He's the one who knows what green means this evening. Mr. Treacher tries to keep a distance from these details."

We bought a newspaper and found the location where our supposed tryst was to take place, and then hailed a cab. The short ride ensued in silence.

We dismounted two blocks from the hotel and walked on opposite sides of the street. The boy had a queer, sidling gait that made him look even more effete. Poor fellow, he should really make an effort to be discreet, I thought. That suit was a distinctly Parisian fashion, when a good English cut would do.

The concierge took my payment with the chit inside. No one even gave me a second glance, nor did anyone seem to note that the well-dressed young man hovering in the background went up with me.

That short transaction made me feel utterly filthy.

The youth's disinterest seemed to emanate from his every move, rendering me the staid-looking man who had purchased his time. I imagined I could see the sordid story forming in every person's mind.

I entered the room with its one bed and I let out a sigh of relief before Mr. Limstock slid in and the awkwardness resumed. There was a note on the coverlet in Holmes' writing. "In the back of the second drawer you will find an old friend."

I half-hoped that Sherlock Holmes himself had fit himself into the bureau, but I was almost as glad to find my doctor's bag.

"Why is this here?" I asked the young man who was perched on the edge of the bed. "Are you ill?"

"Well, Mr. Holmes said as long as we had a few moments you would want to see."

He began unlacing his patent pumps but then faltered when he tried to remove them. "You should see what I have to go through to put them, on, Doctor, so once they're on they stay on." It took several savage yanks for each foot to remove the shoes.

The boy bit his hand to stifle the yelps.

"Good Lord!" I exclaimed when the socks had been gently removed.

"That's why I never take them off before anyone, Doctor, not even when I'm with a young man. They are horrible. I couldn't bear for anyone to see them, sir," Mr. Limstock said in a rush.

The left foot was a twisted mess of extra toes and abnormally high arch that had been scraped raw by its confinement in the worst possible shoe. The right had all the same maladies, compounded by a final extra toe growing out of the top of the arch. This miserable digit had been twisted and scraped so deeply that it alone could have been responsible for the boy's odd manner of walking.

I dashed down the hall, washbasin in hand. With my hands washed and a supply of water, I sprang to work trying to clean the wounds and prevent infection.

"My boy, I can't even begin to understand—" I commented during my careful motions.

"I work as an assistant at Guillaume and Dumas, dry goods importers."

"You've been standing on these feet all day in a shop?" One foot had been patted dry and I started on the next.

"No, Doctor, I'm more of a clerk. I assist the bookkeeper. But everyone there is expected to look nice, and we get a very good discount on the latest things from Paris, so we all dress very well."

I should have known he was too well spoken to be a simple shop-boy. "Surely it doesn't matter to them what is on a clerk's feet under a table."

"It's not that, Doctor. Well," he paused and then plunged ahead. "There is a dance coming up. And I thought if only I could get my feet used to them, soften the leather, like, I could wear proper dance slippers for once. I've been wearing these shoes every moment for days."

I stopped daubing his wounds with disinfectant to stare at this foolishness.

"No wonder I tore your skin separating them from the leather. You've kept unwashed injuries trapped in dank leather for days? Do you realize how serious an infection to the feet can be? You could lose a leg, Mr. Limstock. Two at this rate. You'll never dance again."

My patient was staring at me in horror when outside the door came the sound of footsteps and voices.

Just before someone let themselves in with the key, the lad pulled up the sheet with his greatest concern in his mind—that of preserving the secret of his hideous feet.

"What have we here?" The larger of the two policeman leered at me. "Is this your son? No, I'll tell you who this handsome chap is, Trumbull," he said to the stocky man behind him. "It's his nephew."

"In only one bed, do you reckon, Mahoney?" Trumbull chortled.

My doctor bag must have looked like a traveling valise, so I ordered my companion. "Show him."

"No." Mr. Limstock clutched the sheet under his chin.

I yanked off the bedcovering and he cried out in pain at the fabric rustling against his sores.

"Heaven's name!" Mahoney swore. The other looked away, revolted.

"I am a doctor. And this young man is clearly in need of medical attention." I showed them the contents of my bag and began wrapping the feet with gauze.

"Not too tight," my patient whimpered.

"See here, this is a hotel," Trumbull roused himself from the macabre sight. "Haven't you a surgery where you see patients?"

"Yes, I do," I said grimly. "It would be much better to have all my equipment and a clean environment. But this young man approached me, saying that he had a most embarrassing matter on which to consult me right before his wedding, and he couldn't risk being seen at my office. You can imagine what I thought—"

This had happened to me a few times in my career—a young man who feared he had picked up some social disease from a prostitute suddenly thinking how it might affect his soon-to-be-wife. Luckily, the excuse seemed completely reasonable to the police.

"Oh we know all right. And then he shows you these hooves!" Mahoney laughed.

"They look like smashed spiders," said the other. "And then that one's wandered away from his fellows and gotten stuck at the top! How many toes do you have anyway? Were you trying to cut them off?"

The boy looked as though he was about to cry. "My young friend was just explaining to me that his injuries were caused by wearing that cruel footwear," I pointed to the floor. There my inventiveness ran out. I had no idea how to link the shoes with my original pretext of a young man about to be married, but as the police approached the elegant boots I got an idea.

"If one of you would oblige, I would very much appreciate your taking this surgical knife," I plucked one from my bag, "To split his shoes so that they can be loosely laced around the bandages." I thrust the cutting tool at Mr. Trumbull.

"And you, take these clean bandages and roll them into laces. We shall have to create our own holes and gently enclose his feet."

To my satisfaction, the two policemen took to their tasks quite well, rather than have to watch what I was doing with the abraded flesh.

Mr. Limstock seemed equally pained by his wounds and the rending of the fine leather.

"Why would a man put these mincing boots on at all?" one constable wondered.

The young man finally found his voice. "My Betsy, that is to say, my fiancée, would have me at our wedding in the finest dancing shoes, waltzing with her in front of all her family and friends, who are quite well to do." The lad gave a weak smile. "I'm none too light on my feet in any sort of boots, as you might imagine with my infirmity, but she chose these as the most fitting for her bridegroom and I did not wish to tell her why they suited me so ill."

"Your sweetheart doesn't know about your deformity?" Mahoney asked.

"No, sir. I had hoped to never show her my feet as long as we both should live. Do you think I'll be healed up for the wedding, Doctor? It's in three weeks," he asked me with real urgency.

"See here, young man," I said severely. "If any of those wounds become septic you may be walking to the altar minus a leg. You will consult a special cobbler whose address I will provide you. He will make you some proper boots—that fit, though I can't vouch for how fashionable they will be."

He put his head in his hands.

The officer Trumbull handed me the shoes that had been very well refitted by the policemen. "I tell you, boy, you can't indulge a woman's every whim before you marry, or she'll expect the same from then on," he advised.

Very gently, I placed the bandaged feet within the split leather and then slowly closed them with the makeshift laces. The constables were imparting their own wisdom about handling wives to this young man who had no use for such information. They were even nice enough to help him into the cab with me.

"Health and happiness to you and Betsy," Mahoney called and they waved us off.

"They were rather decent, all things considered," I said to Mr. Limstock.

"They would have down to the station in a moment, if things had been different, Doctor," the lad said as if to a child.

Of course, he was right, and the euphoria at a mission well done began to leave me.

"You were very quick with your story, and just in time," I observed. "It's difficult to play doctor and detective at the same moment."

"That was Mr. Holmes' doing. He is very clever."

This gave me pause. "You mean Mr. Holmes gave you a part to play?"

"Why yes. And I said nothing extra, for he was quite concerned that I would talk too much. Be sure to tell him I did exactly as he said, will you, Dr. Watson?"

To distract from my thoughts, I gave my patient a stern lecture. "Mr. Limstock, I absolutely forbid you to go to work for the next two days. You may, however, go out by carriage to visit the cobbler. You will keep your feet elevated and change the dressings according to my instructions. I will come by the day after tomorrow to see that you are a man who truly wants to keep his feet."

"Yes, Doctor. That's very kind of you sir," he said meekly.

"Now tell me truly. Men dance together?" I had been wanting to ask him.

"Oh yes." He brightened. "That wasn't true what I said about my being clumsy. I'm a great one for dancing, when I have a chance."

"But do they take turns leading?" I couldn't imagine how it would work.

"I can dance either part," the lad said proudly, "But of course many only know the gentleman's role. It's great fun, but there's usually only but two or three a year, if that. Dancing is grand for when you don't know what to say to someone but you want to see what they're like."

He chattered on, much like any young person would look forward to a ball. He didn't seem to mind that the location, released at the last minute for secrecy's sake, would be like other times, probably be a barn in the suburbs or else an abandoned wing in a factory.

"Not everyone wears fancy dress, though many do, so they can run away better if need be. Me, I wanted to be able to wear the entire set, including the dance shoes. But I understand now, Doctor. I wouldn't put you out after all the trouble you've taken over me. You had those policemen working under you like it was nothing!"

He rapped on the side and the dog cart came to a halt in front of a modest but comfortable-looking home. "My landlady will take me in hand, don't you worry, Doctor," he said as I helped him down, wincing at every step.

A stout lady came to the door and began exclaiming over my patient's bandages. "I'll be in to look at him in two days. He's not to go to work until I clear him," I told her.

"I give you my word, Doctor," said his version of Mrs. Hudson.

Thus reassured about my patient, I could go home to my very own Mrs. Hudson.


	2. Chapter 2

When I dismounted at Baker Street, I had only the pleasant feeling of having performed my doctorly functions well. For a few minutes, Holmes listened while I told him of what this young man had put himself through, and how many toes he had been willing to smash to meet his goal of being elegant from head to many toes at his dance.

"He had nine extras, counting the errant toe on the top," I told my friend. He even had me sketching the presumed placement of the bones when I stopped short.

"You gave Mr. Limstock lines to recite."

"Yes. He's a charming lad with much to say, but I wanted to trust he would not speak too freely."

"He was most anxious to impress you, Holmes, and so he played his part well." Holmes flushed slightly over his young admirer.

"And though I also comported myself very well, I should have appreciated knowing what was going to happen!" I exclaimed. "You said you would be in disguise and watching to see if we were followed or someone in the lobby seemed to be observing us. The constables came rather quickly, and if I hadn't been actively treating a wound it would have been very difficult to establish that I am not in the habit of purchasing a young man's company!"

Holmes got up and poured me a drink, which I accepted gratefuly. "Watson, you do best under pressure. It's a well-established fact. Many soldiers are the same."

"Do you take a certain pleasure at withholding information from me?" I spluttered.

"It had to be thus, but only this time, Watson. It was essential that you hand in the chit to the concierge as if you were a nervous man hoping only for this sensitive transaction to be over so that you could gain the privacy of your room."

"It was highly embarrassing with that winsome Mr. Limstock lurking in the background," I muttered.

"Precisely what you should have felt," the detective assured me. "Once you were in the room, you would have been immediately more confident once reunited with your bag, which I engineered to arrive before you. Am I correct?"

"How could I think of anything else once I saw those mistreated feet!"

"This was the real reason for the surprise," my friend said. "For I know Dr. John Watson would think of nothing else but treating whatever injury had a healthy young man sidling on the edges of his feet. You would have walked right in to that hotel with a doctor's bearing, and not a lover's, if I managed to get you there at all."

"I suppose you're right in this case," I said grudgingly. "What this boy did to himself in the name of a dance. I still can't picture it—a whole string section set up amidst the sawdust or the hay."

"I have heard these men's dances are a singular experience," Holmes said with an odd lilt.

"You wouldn't. I've never known you to dance!"

"With a partner of my interest, I might find it a compelling experience."

"Perhaps Bruno's visit will coincide with a ball in the future," I comforted him. "He strikes me as a graceful sort, and he is certainly fearless."

"He would not mind my attendance without him, were I to have no specific partner," the detective continued.

"But Holmes, do you even know how?" was my question. He seemed to have been deprived of all other aspects of a normal adolescence, so where would he have learned to dance?

"Not particularly well, but a waltz doesn't require very much skill. I think it is actually to my advantage that I have no set habits to re-teach myself."

"Re-teach? You wouldn't play the man's role?" This was beyond my comprehension.

"I am a man, Watson. And no, I shouldn't like to learn steps that I will only have to unlearn when Bruno is here to lead. That's where any fumbling comes in, I gather."

He gazed at me placidly.

Suddenly I started in my chair. "You wish to learn from me? I'm not an excellent dancer, but I suppose I could teach you, should you have an opportunity when Bruno is visiting." This nostalgia for his absent partner was quite touching. "It is nice that you admit you miss him during these absences you claim not to affect you at all," I couldn't help finishing.

My companion stared at me. "What are you talking about, Watson? I need your assistance so that I will be assured a partner at this famous secret dance. There will be few who are skilled at the passive role, so I hear, and having my choice of partners is preferable." His expression was growing colder and colder. "Perhaps you should consult your writings on my character. I'm not a romantic."

"Of course not," I said soothingly, not wishing to force him to admit his pain. I stood up. "This exercise will be just like one of your experiments to see if it is possible to unlock a series of complex bolts while holding a full-grown man on your shoulders. We'll manage."

"Precisely." He stood up and shook my hand.

We cleared away the furniture and put on the phonograph.

I poised his hands in the right position. When I placed my hand on his waist and used the other to grasp his bony palm, it forced me to face the detective's expectant, studious expression at such close proximity, I almost laughed. But this seemingly trivial exercise needed all my concentration.

To distract from the awkwardness of the first steps, I tried to converse. "Young Mr. Limstock conducted himself well, but I'm afraid his head is filled entirely with dancing, fashion and the latest romances in his set. Why should you entrust him with a sensitive mission?"

"It seemed the safest use for the attentions of this sweet young chap. Twice I've been watching a nocturnal venue and turned around to see Mr. Limstock watching me from farther down the street!"

I burst out laughing at the image of a besotted youth interfering with the great detective's workings, and Holmes laughed with me. "For his safety and my anonymity, I had to redirect his energies to something useful. It matters not if he chooses to gossip about helping the great Sherlock Holmes. I prefer it to the alternative story he would circulate—as would Bruno."

"A sweet young chap.' That's a rather warm description, coming from you," I jested. "Perhaps Bruno wouldn't prefer you to be spending time with this handsome lad at all."

We almost crashed into the mantle and Holmes confided in my ear, "I am tremendously jealous that you get to consult with him at his dwelling."

"Holmes!" This interest in such a young man seemed highly improper—and disrespectful to his sworn love.

"What a case of polydactyly, Dr. Watson. It was one of my theories for his irregular gait, although I could have never expected so many extra digits. I am dying to see these feet, especially the errant toe, as you so poetically called it. There must be some sort of family history, but alas, if Bruno were to ever hear I had visited a man in his home, I would never hear the end of it. He would not accept my fascination with the bizarre at face value, as you would."

The music ended as our feet became tangled and we nearly lost our footing. I extricated myself to restart the recording. The long evening was beginning to wear on me.

"I am not accustomed to partners who are taller than I am," I grunted as we swung into motion. "But if you would only remember that I am the man, and you are to follow me."

"I am a man, Watson." He stepped sharply on my foot.

"I am aware of this, because no young lady wears size ten boots and fights my every move with the strength of a pugilist."

"If you're going to lead, then lead. If the situation were reversed, I would leave you no doubt as to the next move."

At this I began reciting my moves aloud: "Left, two three, right, two, three."

"That is making matters worse, because you are referring to _your _left and _your_ right," Holmes hissed.

"Stop thinking so much," I advised the brittle form in my arms. " A partner is supposed to be supple, light on her feet, responsive. You're a mass of tension and you're making me nervous."

"And I feel quite certain your dancing is very inferior, Doctor, because you make me feel quite unnecessarily foolish. But you are the only instructor available, so perhaps we can avoid the characterizations and focus on the task."

The absurdity of the situation had us both on edge. Our feet were frequently trodden upon and we struggled not to run into the furniture. Where normally we could use each other to establish the likely direction of a projectile with the greatest trust, a little waltz was threatening our friendship with a free exchange of insults like nothing ever before.

We were just managing to avoid running into a chair and keeping ourselves upright by force when we heard:

"All I need is another baritsu fighter in my house, Mr. Holmes," a nightdress-clad Mrs. Hudson said, holding her sides and laughing. "I think you have much to learn, Doctor. I do appreciate that you moved the furniture for once, but please, while you do your exercises," she darted into the room and grabbed a lamp, "Let me hold on to the last fine piece of glassware in this house for safekeeping."

"Certainly Mrs. Hudson," I said politely from where we had frozen in place with our arms dropped to our sides.

"Was the music too loud?" my partner asked. "We thought it would be more pleasant to listen to than Dr. Watson's complaints. He is quite out of form."

"I didn't heed any music," the lady replied. "The stomping around made me worried that one of your criminal re-enactments had gone too far."

When she left we each found a cigarette and took up a stance in opposite corners of the room.

"How long do you estimate she was standing there?" I asked as the blood finally began to leave my face.

Holmes answered airily, "I tell you Watson, a consulting detective never has to make an excuse for anything. And she thought it was your poor showing, not mine."

Fortified with a quick drink, we were back at it again, this time with the music muffled so that we should hear the stairs creak if someone were to climb up to see us.

At least as much for my sake as his, I stopped and said, "Holmes, I have an idea." I retrieved one of the dark scarves we've used for other experiments and made to blindfold him. "It's the only way for you to rely on my lead," I said when he checked my gesture.

He went to the mantelpiece and picked up a small pot of something from behind a statue. "Bruno's hair pomade. Otherwise I would still be excruciatingly aware that I am in the arms of a doctor who has spent all day in his surgery smelling of camphor and alcohol."

He anointed the handkerchief with a small amount of the pomade, inhaled deeply, smiled, and let me affix it over his eyes. "I'm convinced Bruno left a nearly full jar with me because he knows how strongly this Italian confection reminds me of him." He held out his arms and I placed them correctly. "You're a little taller, Watson, but what is most distracting is the fact that your wounded left leg is noticeably shorter than your right now that I am connected to your movements. I shall have to pretend Bruno is wearing an ill-fitting pair of shoes."

I reached over and started the music.

The effect was miraculous.

My companion allowed himself to be led, and soon that magical sympathy that grows up between partners had us moving around the room very fluidly. Even more significantly, I was no longer faced by a grim countenance trying to master a lesson. Holmes smiled. I became very sure that he had successfully imagined me into his paramour because his waist became sensitive and yielding. One of his hands at my neck strayed just up to the edge of my hair.

For the first time in all our grappling, I got a violent jolt at this quasi-incest we were engaging in, and I almost pulled back from this man who could be my brother. Luckily, I mastered the instinct in time to give Holmes the rest of the dance he might never enjoy with the partner he might never see again. If I could give him a few more moments of imagined happiness, than I would do so.

Finally, the music ended. Holmes stood there with his lips slightly parted and cheeks flushed.

"Holmes."

"Hm?"

"Holmes," I made a move to disengage.

He stumbled backwards and I caught him before he thwacked his head on the mantelpiece. He struggled out of the scarf.

"That was rather better," I said to smooth over the discomfort of the moment.

"Quite. But I won't be able to rely on this trick at the dance if I wish to detect the interloper. And I still find whirling around the room to be the least comfortable way to observe."

For the next several nights, we alternated with the scarf and without until finally our bodies became accustomed to each other and our eyes could ignore those of our closest friend.

Then I brought out the blindfold again, so that I could lead Holmes into the parlor after I had prepared it with certain alterations that he must detect while being spun around the room by his dancing partner.

This made any residual tension fall away, as the sleuth could be a sleuth once more without concentrating on how he appeared on the dance floor.

"After all our practice, I am rather looking forward to this dance," I admitted, now that we were perfectly comfortable talking while we waltzed, although the other selections in our limited dancing repertoire were less fluid. "Perhaps it is merely a curiosity for me, but I can't imagine why so many people would take such a risk, especially with the possibility of an intruder in attendance. If our landlady weren't accustomed to every extravagance from us, she might have had some objections to our dancing in the privacy of our rooms."

"And I tell you once again, Watson, that you are right, but even the great Treacher is powerless to call it off. You are aware that this event, like several others in my world, occurs by word of mouth, and there is only a rough estimate of when the great ball will be held. We know it will be sometime between the seventh and the twenty-first of June. During that time, interested men will have their evening dress at the ready and when they receive a signal through the network, they will dash off to the location, have an enjoyable hour or two with friends, and then dash off before anyone is the wiser. Just as the musicians will be ready with their instruments, with several extra on hand, in case some are engaged for the night."

Deftly, I moved us around the tricky spot where the carpet ended. "Couldn't the all-powerful Treacher send out a decree that this is hardly the time for revelry?"

"He's tried. And everyone has taken these pronouncements as his attempt to cover over the fact that there is to be a ball or that he might be involved. You see the predicament."

"Will the great Treacher be in attendance?" I suddenly asked. The evening seemed far less elegant in my mind."

"No, Watson. His hand is known to be in every pie in that part of town, but the man himself will be at his tavern as usual, because it must seem like a normal night. It is really a select few who will be across town listening to the strains of the string players and grasping on to their partner's arms. Not all of them will be as prepared as I," he smiled. Then he continued informing me of the mechanics of this mysterious affair.

"And of these select invitees, only the very few, probably no more than five men, are the organizers and possess the information of where the dance will be held, if there are not indeed two possibilities, in case one of them should be compromised. They take care that the place is sufficiently lighted and absolutely secure, and congratulate themselves that they have brought a fleeting joy to others whose happiness is always measured in small amounts."

"Perhaps." I switched the music on the phonograph to a mazurka. "Even though I can't imagine dancing with a man other than you, much less in public, I would not like Inspector Lestrade, say, to appear at my shoulder while I'm watching the proceedings."

"You are free not to attend."

"After all this preparation! I plan on seeing my pupil enact his lessons!"

Though it didn't seem so at first, the dancing lessons were the easiest part of this investigation. The morning after my escapade with at the hotel, I came to breakfast that had already been covered over by layers of paper.

I unearthed my egg and the basket of toast along with a ration of bacon. "What's this Holmes? Are you putting together a genealogy?" For the papers had been distributed in the form of a very complex family tree, complete with symbols and colors such as we had employed for family histories.

Holmes threw up his hands in disgust. "I wish these last several weeks had been devoted to finding out who begat whom, Watson. What you see are the far more complicated mating habits of the men's clubs."

I spilled the coffee mid-pour and he snatched up one of the sheets.

"You've been tracking people's romantic liaisons?" My eyes tried to comprehend the vast network of lines and focused on one name with many connections. "Is this Angus the violin player? I had no idea that he was so sought-after."

Holmes made a noise of disgust. "Perhaps I should have sent you to gather these facts, Watson, because I took no pleasure in prying into others' intimacy. Do not worry, no one was even aware that I was collecting this information, some of which I had gathered without having to ask. You know my methods."

This was one of the first times I had heard Holmes bow to anyone's privacy, but then, this chart was the first extensive look at others' sexual as well as social habits. I did feel rather uncomfortable with so many people's very dangerous secrets littered across our breakfast table. "Do what you need to do and burn it all," I advised. "What are you trying to accomplish, anyway?"

"The red names have all received these letters warning them that they have been seen in a compromising place." He pointed to his own name. "The green marks with the connecting lines are people who are known to have been with that person on that evening, thought of course that is impossible to determine with any degree of certainty. And the blue stars indicate those who have been questioned by the authorities for some reason or another."

I studied the markings and compared them to my knowledge of the letters. There were more blue marks than I would have imagined. "Morris, the tall fellow with the goatee, was advised he was seen at a certain locale. His friend, Lyle, was also there that evening—this means what, exactly?"

"It is very possible that a Lyle or a Morris or an Angus is, in fact, being blackmailed. Someone could be trying to squeeze all the valuable secrets of this clandestine world by pressing this one man, and because he has no desire to be humiliated or imprisoned, he has no choice but to comply. Such a person would be well placed to see who took the chit, or to know which couples habitually meet in hotels."

"Yet the letters are benign," I pointed out.

"The letters are written because he has close friends whom he wishes to protect from any harm—hence the polite warnings many of us have received."

"Still—that leaves everyone else," I pointed out. "A man could be informing on his acquaintances, the people we see over a drink or for dinner, and acting like nothing is wrong." It was a chilling situation, given that so many men we frequented were either married or had a high position in society, and thus had so much to lose.

Holmes lit a cigarette. "But I have amassed some portion of the relationships surrounding the letter recipients, and I find no pattern. I had hoped to see links based on friendship, romance or animosity. Whole groups of men who were being warned because one person cared about all of them." He groaned. "Instead there are some men whose lovers are completely unaware of other affairs, and now I have to feign ignorance." He rubbed his face.

I suddenly realized that he was more burdened by this case than others, and I felt guilty for not realizing how the threat of exposure would affect him much more than I. "How can I help, Holmes?"

"Help me lock these in the safe, first of all," he said, beginning to gather the papers. We soon shut the door on the incendiary information. 

"As to your question, would you like to go out with me this evening? And every other evening until we divine the real threat?"

Of course I would go, though there were fewer and fewer men willing to risk congregating in specialized locales, and many others had moved to meetings in more transited restaurants. Some were convinced that having a drink in a converted storeroom could not be reprehensible, however, and the theater crowd, especially, as well as the musicians, needed a place to make a little noise.

But once I had begun to understand that a member of the club was very likely a turncoat, it changed my perception of these once-enjoyable outings.

For the first time, I began to understand how costly these get-togethers could be. Far from the quarrels common at a normal tavern, at these secret places there was never any impropriety, for everyone understood the danger of drawing attention to these well-behaved drinking parties. But then, with Holmes by my side, it was easy to feel invulnerable.

We knew many men at Scotland Yard and on the local constabularies. Holmes and I were probably the only two men in London who could be fished out of a raid in the thieves' district, an opium den or a brothel and be met with a warm welcome along the lines of, "Hullo, gentlemen, on a case?" and a presumption of innocence.

After several evenings of watching my friends and acquaintances for signs of a desperate turncoat who was watching us, I began to feel very morose. For some reason, this inspection made me feel like the disloyal one, and that made me understand how much I had come to value these social opportunities over those available elsewhere in town.

Now, I am much more social than Sherlock Holmes ever was or could be, but this craving for human warmth has always been checked by an intermittent shyness. I can talk to most people, but to only a few can I say what I really mean. I had always thought I would flourish in an artistic atmosphere, but never had a way to break into these circles. Now, I find a greater relaxation in the back rooms of London's cafés and taverns than I had ever hoped to find.

This is what I was reflecting one Friday while drinking more quickly than someone on a case should allow himself. Holmes had been in and out of the Green Lion's basement all night. It was one of those evenings when many were talking quietly after a discussion of the anonymous letter problem, difficulties with the hotels and a general sense that the authorities were watching. To lighten the mood, someone had coaxed Paul Drummond to the front of the room.

All human sounds died away, and Mr. Drummond, who was an actor and sometime singer, began his repertoire of birdcalls. He claimed to know every species to be heard in the British Isles, and I always found him to be a marvel.

On this night, tears were coming to my eyes. What if all of this were to end? This society that had been so welcoming to me, it was terribly fragile, and pressed in the right way it could crumble.

"There, there, Doctor, you're drinking yourself into a state," my neighbor said with those queer resounding t's that were part of his Slavic accent.

I looked over and saw a man I recognized as a set painter, musician and jack-of-all-trades in the theater district.

"Stanley!"

There was no one I would rather spend a maudlin moment with. Stanley was my first friend in these circles, and he was a wonderful drinking partner, for the reason that he seldom spoke.

I didn't know this from our first meeting, of course, because he spoke quite a bit. It was one of my first forays into the men's clubs, and Holmes had promptly abandoned me to an awkward perch in a corner. Suddenly, this big fellow was by my side, introducing me to nearly every man from the theater group with his thickly accented voice.

His given name was presumed to be Stanislaus, but no one knew his last name—it was apparently so unpronounceably Slavic that everyone had given up on it. He was Lithuanian, I had been told, and he had long, untidy, wheat-colored hair and a sloping brow, as well as immensely broad shoulders. Stanley was at least four inches taller than Holmes, who was six feet.

"So Stanley's adopted you," one of the actors said to me that first night when my new acquaintance had retired to a corner with his drink. "It happens only rarely. The gentle giant doesn't like to see anyone uncomfortable."

"More like if he sees someone looking out of place, he hopes to find another runt of the litter," another actor said archly.

They explained to me that no one knew much about Stanley because the man seldom said anything. He replied to most questions with his two expressions—a childlike joy and a black scowl—but in either case he caused no trouble, and so people treated him as a sort of mascot. For the gentleman's clubs Holmes introduced me to were just that—for gentlemen. Scene painters like Stanley tended to gravitate towards tradesmen's taverns.

But the silent Slav appeared sure of two things—that he could perform almost any function backstage and that he belonged with these gentlemen who had an interest in each other. Whenever I saw him he was always dressed the same—a wide-sleeved Russian blouse, usually spattered with paint, a sort of rustic vest in which he hid a small sketchpad, and a fancy-dress jacket that could have just as easily been for a footman as for the man he served, but that at least fit his bulk like a glove.

"He's not only an astonishingly good scene painter, one of the best I've ever seen," one of the actors said to me that first night. "Stanley can also play several instruments. It's very easy to forget such a big presence is even there, with so much noise going on at the theater. One evening it turned out that we had no violinist to play a very technical theme for a romance that the director called a 'Amelia's Air.' The entire cast and crew was assembled, watching the director was tearing out his hair because there was no one to replace the musician who was ill. 'Where is my Air? I must have my Air!' he was shouting."

"I believe I know the director in question," a listening actor said wryly.

"But Stanley was hiding in the wings as usual, and he must have heard it all," continued the man who was telling me the story. "For while the director was shouting himself hoarse we heard a sound. It was this very haunting, very difficult music being played on a violin with more skill than even the regular violinist.

"We all crept closer to the source of the music, and it was Stanley. Since no one had any idea that this coarse man could play, or even that he followed what was going on around him sometimes, it was miraculous. But when everyone applauded, he ran off into his lair in some corner. Gradually, he was coaxed out, but he refused to play from the orchestra pit.

"And so the director allowed him to play from the wings, and the first time the audience heard this emotional violin music coming from an unexpected place, they gasped. From then on, that was the way the violin part was played."

I was then unaccustomed to conversing with actors, and thought that most of the story's charm was in the man who told it. But another part of me recognized that Stanley was a true eccentric, someone worth paying attention to.

"He's a savant, you see, Doctor. He has an uncommonly kind nature, but he is absolutely terrified of people at the same time," commented someone else.

"He seems so simple, it's hard to imagine that he's ever been with a man," another whispered. "But Stanley's out at least once a week, happy or sad, for a little company."

From that night onward, I did try to keep an eye out for Stanley in the cafés and private taverns to which he gravitated for some reason. People were always surprised that he spoke quite clearly with me, because listening to him try to articulate a sentence was a most painful experience.

The rhythm of his speech reminded me of trying to pour coins out of a narrow-necked bottle. There was nothing, then a few words, then a tremendous effort produced a sentence at most. Then the process was repeated. Rather than subjecting himself or anyone else to this struggle, Stanley preferred to express himself in the brilliant sketches he dashed off like nothing and often presented to the subject.

But with me, it was different. I induced him to tell me of his native regions and his travels and he spoke well, sometimes with a surprising vocabulary for a foreigner. Other times he asked me questions about India, a place he very much wanted to visit. And the laconic man also showed some wry wit in his descriptions of the theatrical world that so fascinated me.

In his own way, he was an observer at the clubs, an outsider like me, though for a different reason, so his company was always most agreeable to me. After all, I was tongue-tied myself compared to the razor-tongued actors and other wags who dominated these circles.

The reader will understand, then, why I was delighted to share my inebriation with the one person in the room who was likely to understand me.

"It's so beautiful, it's just so beautiful," I said of the birdcalls. Stanley patted my arm.

"I came out tonight hoping to see you, Doctor," he said. He drew out a paper from his vest. "I've had one of those messages you and Mr. Holmes are investigating. It arrived Wednesday morning."

"'Don't go out this evening. A friend,'" I read aloud. "Did it come in an envelope?"

He shrugged. "It got wet at the theater, but there was no postmark."

My mind cleared somewhat. "This is very strange. I have not heard of anyone receiving a warning before going out." My melancholy returned. "It still can mean nothing healthful that there is someone watching all of us, most likely from within the same room." I gestured widely with my glass and then downed the contents.

The birdcalls had finished and the other men were circulating in the low-ceilinged room. "Now, it's not worth getting upset about, Doctor," Stanley comforted me. "I don't believe it is one of our fellows who has been writing these letters."

My drunken brain struggled to remember the day. "There was a raid Wednesday night, wasn't there?" When I'd come in, there had been men talking in a hush about the police descending upon a small room operated by a restaurant, Grimley's. It seemed so long ago.

"I heard there had been one, but you must understand that I've been working very hard for days. I slept at the theater Wednesday and Thursday." The great brow lowered. "I wish I'd noticed the envelope at my door sooner. You see, Doctor, not ten men in the city know where I live, and I pick up what little post I receive from the post office. Receiving any correspondence at all frightened me," he said with that open way he had.

"It will be fine, Stanley, you'll see. Mr. Holmes and I, we—" I broke off. "Why do you think it couldn't have been one of the men here?" I asked.

"Because the private room at Grimley's will be shut down for some time due to the police. Why would any of us want to have fewer places to go?"

I was gaping at Stanley because he was thinking much more logically than I thought him capable. "And if it isn't one of our group," I said with unusual ownership, "Then who could it be?"

He leaned close to my ear and whispered, "The police."

I threw back my head and roared with laughter. In some faraway place, I was aware I was making a spectacle of myself, but Stanley put another drink in front of me and made me drink it down like medicine.

"Better? Listen very quietly."

He put his mouth to my ear and explained his preposterous idea in a low voice. Only the police would know there would be a raid. The authorities would be able to locate him because he'd been "pinched" a few times, he didn't say for what.

"You, Stanley, you were found—doing—by the police?" I couldn't imagine him doing something illicit in a public place.

"I talked my way out of it," Several people at in the room were shooting incredulous glances at me for being able to draw out Stanley into more than one complete sentence, so the idea that he would be able to wheedle his way out of a morals charge seemed highly improbable. Still, when I studied him for some kind of police-bending charm, I found it.

He grinned at my drunken wonder. "Ssh," he said in one long drawn-out sound with his finger before his mysterious face.

I wound up for another guffaw and he thumped me on the back. "It's the only explanation, Doctor. I'm sure tomorrow you'll see it my way."

"I see it your way now, my good chap!" Suddenly I became concerned that my elusive companion would see fit to run off the way he usually did at some point in an evening. I wasn't going to allow my clue to escape. "Tell me about your country."

He was unusually willing to do so that night, and when I mentioned his musical ability that he normally guarded very closely, he surprised me and everyone by bursting into some mournful song in some foreign language. His fine baritone voice silenced the room in a moment, and when he was done, I wouldn't let him become embarrassed so I ordered us another.

And another. I remember thinking that Stanley was the symbol of everything noble yet misunderstood that I wished to protect, even from the police.

Holmes re-entered the room and found me clutching onto the stagehand's arm as if he would run away. "Sherlock! I found a clue!"

I'd not let go of the beefy arm attached to Stanley, and I raised it with difficulty before collapsing under its weight.

My clue helped me out of the chair and between them they carried me to a cab. "Tell him, Stanley, tell him we had it all wrong! Holmes! Don't let him run away like he does!"

"Ssh, Doctor, you may relax yourself. I will go nowhere until you bid me to," the accented voice bade me, and I concentrated upon withstanding the nausea-inducing cab ride home.

The next morning I crawled out of a bed I did not remember getting into. My clue was in the parlor with a blanket over his knees and his enormous workman's boots on the floor. Evidently Stanley had been induced to spend the night.

"Did he tell you?" I croaked to the detective.

Holmes poured me some tea and I sipped it cautiously.

"I saw the letter, and I heard Stanley's theory. You did a fine job last evening, Doctor, and I hope your heroic headache goes away quickly. For that you can blame Stanley, who knew perfectly well that I am collecting such letters and he should have brought it to me, no whiskey necessary, without delay."

Here the reader must allow me a little writerly license. For if I were to write down every stutter and long pause in Stanley's speech, it would make for very tiresome reading. And so I ask you to imagine the mutually frustrating experience it was for a tongue-tied Stanley to try to explain himself to Sherlock Holmes, and for a very impatient detective to wait for said guest to find the right words to answer his rapid-fire questions.

Suffice it to say, that our co-conspirator was already red-faced and miserable from jogging the faulty valve of his speech, and my roommate was at the end of his patience.

"I was working on a set, Mr. Holmes. It was a big job, a rush job. I was so concerned I didn't see the letter, er, I did see it, I stepped over it, but I took no note of a bit of trash. And had I read it, I would have thought nothing, sir. My mind was on the painting job that kept me away from the back room at Grimley's, where I might have otherwise joined some of the fellows from the show. It's one of those plays set in a palace, and the director would have all that trompe—trompe—"

"Trompe l'oeil," Holmes snapped.

"And I'm one of the only ones that does it the way it ought to be done. That's the truth, sir. There was so much to be done I slept in the theater, when I did sleep. When my job was through Friday evening I went out for a drink, and you can see I brought the letter last night to show one of you. And I did, didn't I, Doctor?"

The bulky scene painter was withering under Holmes' least-gentle interrogation techniques.

"Quiet down, both of you," I complained while attempting to swallow a tonic. "Speak to me, Stanley, very softly, and tell me everything."

Once more, my presence worked its magic, and soon the big man was speaking fluently and gesturing with a piece of toast in one hand and a cup of tea in the other as if he presided over our parlor any day of the week.

The men explained their discoveries from the morning. Stanley had, of course, never had the benefit of seeing all the other letters and their dates spread before him. Together, he and Holmes were able to isolate the pattern that had long eluded the detective.

Though the painter hadn't received a letter before Wednesday, he had been at each of the gatherings that had occasioned a letter to someone else.

"Stanley has an admirer in the police force," Holmes summed up.

The blonde features reddened. "I've heard there are men of our persuasion in every walk of life, so why not the police?" Stanley shrugged.

"Then why wouldn't this person write only to Stanley?" I asked.

"Because repeated letters to the same man would be very compromising. Someone on the force would realize that," Holmes said. "This method was more oblique, but he counted on perhaps greater communication in the café set than really exists."

"I go my own way, float from group to group," Stanley explained. "I can sit down at a table with nearly any man and be welcomed. But no one knows where I live." He scanned my face anxiously.

"We will tell no one your place of residence," I assured him.

"Then I can tell you gentlemen that I live on a boat. I pick up my mail at the post office, but this one came to my door on the canal. It gave me a bit of a jolt when I finally recognized it as a letter."

"The police would have a record of his location or could find it if need be," I observed.

"And they might have a record of those who have detained and released him in the past, though I am not sure how to obtain this information, which would not have been recorded, since our friend cannot recall anything useful about those occasions," Holmes said severely.

This was the point at which I would normally rein in the detective's fervor, and I struggled to live up to my role this morning with a cool cloth over my eyes. "Holmes, stop frightening Stanley. He's not used to people browbeating him, which is why he works behind the scenes, where it is relatively quiet, rather than being subject to angry directors and hostile audiences, though he undoubtedly would have a charming presence on the stage."

I heard a gasp from the Slav's direction. "Stanley, you may go. Thank you very much for sharing the letter and all the toasts I vaguely remember having with you. If we have more questions, I will contact you very politely at the theater and with my detective on a leash. Now if you will both excuse me," I stumbled blindly into my bedchamber and knew nothing for several hours.

When I awoke, Holmes brought me my broth in bed.

"Was I so terrible to Friend Stanley? How did you know he would have liked to be an actor?" he asked me.

"Because he's a combination of gregarious and timid that normally means a frustrated kind of life."

Sherlock Holmes flinched at the brutality in my voice, which he would have no way of knowing was directed at myself.

"This is a difficult case, Watson. Perhaps it wears on you more than upon me. My insensitivity saves me."

"Perhaps." I saw signs that Holmes was unusually affected by the case, but I did not wish to insist upon the point.

I finished the broth and lay my head on the pillow. Holmes brought me the thermometer and I had a low fever. I was well aware that the infection had entered me some time back and I had been fighting it all this time. Only I could know that I was going through some psychical crisis rather than a physical one, but I took advantage of those couple of red notches above normal and stayed in bed for a day, something that normally requires a bullet wound.

At last, dear reader, the time has come to tell you exactly why I despise Mr. Treacher.


	3. Chapter 3

Shortly after Bruno first abandoned Holmes, while my friend was taking his rest-cure in France, there was an unwelcome visitor to my surgery early one morning.

"Mr. Treacher, you could not have come here with Mr. Holmes' blessing," I said to the person who had tapped on my door shortly after I had unlocked it and shut it behind me. "Because he would know I do not care to mix his profession with mine unless he has specifically petitioned me. Here my occupation reigns, and there is no place in it for your unsavory business."

He merely smiled. "Mr. Holmes didn't send me. This is between you and me, Doctor."

He stood there peacefully on my threshold as if prepared to never move again. I had no choice but to usher him in to the consultation room and leave a note on the door stating that I was occupied.

He maneuvered up the steps I have provided for those who have difficulty attaining the height of my cot and sat there with his short legs dangling.

"Well, what is this supposed business of ours? I have patients to arrive shortly."

His speech became much more quick and precise. "You had a case four years back. It was a murder of an elderly lady of some great wealth, and there was robbery involved as well. When you and Mr. Holmes unmasked the lady's butler and secret lover as the culprit, you found only some of the jewels. The rest were presumed stolen, and since the butler hanged himself in his cell, no one could ask him about their whereabouts. Do you recall the matter?"

This one speech had me re-evaluating this interloper's level of intelligence as well as the reach of that intelligence. How could he possibly be privy to a police investigation?

I tried to cast my mind back, but my mind was more upon the preparation for Mrs. Eldrow's rheumatism that I had meant to be making up at that moment. "Perhaps. Holmes and I comment upon and archive many more cases than he actually accepts, so I can think of several similar cases without landing upon one in particular."

It occurred to me that I had already let this interview go much farther than I intended. I began retrieving my some instruments, cotton wool, a thermometer, and other tools of my trade from the console. "I would have to look at my records before commenting, should I decide to comment. Now you must answer my question, sir: why do you ask?"

He watched my brusque movements with deep-set eyes that seemed to me, by the light of day, to carry their own grimy nocturnal shadows. "It's nothing, Dr. Watson. I merely ask for you to verify a few details about the truth from your own records, which are both more accessible and more complete than those of the police. No doubt these details had no significance at the time, a margin note, perhaps. And the protagonists are dead."

My eyes focused on the lotion I was stirring, hoping that my visitor would disappear if ignored. "If someone other than I were to ask you, Dr. Watson, you would not hesitate to share these few facts. In this case, it is for a very good cause."

I liked this more intelligent and articulate little thug less than I liked the simple thug, was my thought. Then my blood ran cold. "Is this about Holmes? I knew you would use the knowledge you have about him someday! And if, Mr. Treacher, you are extorting me for information for his sake, I demand to know the threat against him."

He made a calming gesture. "Let's just say it could be him."

"Is it Bruno? He's in a very sensitive line of work." As upset as I was with the Italian, I shouldn't wish him another public disgrace.

"Could be him, too," Treacher said.

"What if I say no? What will you do to them?"

He stared at me. "Nothing, Doctor. I won't do anything at all. I'm merely informing you that you have it in your power to help someone. If you say it is not within your means, then I will say good morning."

My hand inched towards the scalpel that I had kept within reach. "Perhaps I will tell the police of this blackmail attempt, for I cannot take it as anything else."

The oily grin returned. "You won't, Dr. Watson, I'm quite sure of that."

"Oh?" I liked nothing less than this creature presuming to know me.

"You are a man of complete confidence," the man asserted. "That's why I handle all my business strictly face to face, and I could tell first time I laid eyes on you. We don't have too many onlookers in my inner circle, so to speak, and yet I have the utmost confidence in you going wherever you like in my domain, sir. As much as Mr. Holmes."

"Then you should ask Mr. Sherlock Holmes directly, as he has an inexplicably good opinion of you. They are his cases, more than mine." The bottle of lotion was set to one side with a bang.

"Because Mr. Holmes and I have a connection now, one that would not be too difficult to draw, if someone looked for it. It's best to keep him out of this. But you, Doctor, have no such tie to me or anyone else inconvenient."

I nodded reluctantly. "That is so. If I decide to help, what is it you need, and how would I get word to you?"

"I would like to know about an umbrella that might have been left at the scene of the crime. And the exact description of the missing jewels." That did seem relatively innocuous and he took in my reaction. Then he said as an afterthought, "And any names you noted down for the case might also be helpful. They might remember something that was missed years ago."

"Something to help recover the jewels you mean?" Treacher's motivations became clearer. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Where would you intend to send them, if found?"

"To the hands of the authorities, of course," he said as if I were truly dim. He continued, "Have a trusted messenger leave an envelope addressed to Mr. William Dobson with the maître d at Pagani's. Take care to recopy anything that might be traced to you or your friend."

I almost believed he cared about our anonymity.

Pagani's was a much fancier address than I would expect for his network, but I was anxious to get him out of my surgery. "If I find the information and decide to share it, you will know within two days. Now I'm sure I've heard the door open at least twice, so unless you plan on paying me for a consultation, I must ask you to leave."

"Much obliged for your time," he said and began clambering down from the table. For the first time, I regarded his movements as not just those of a short man but of an unusually stiff one. I grasped his arm to help and felt the skin give way slightly under my grasp.

"Wait a moment, Mr. Treacher. May I see your arm? He took off his jacket and rolled up the sleeve. His fingers were very short, so I had not noted the slight swelling, but the arm was easier to see when I compressed the skin and it held the mark. "Has someone ever treated you for this edema?" I rolled up his trouser leg and the swelling was much worse at the ankles.

"When I was in Malta, a doctor there gave me these." He took out a small bottle of black pills. "We didn't understand each other's language very well, but he poked at me like you're poking now and told me by signs that this was the stuff to help it."

"You mean you take whatever someone gives you without care as to what it is?" My impression of his intelligence plummeted once more.

He tapped his forehead. "I looked at the man and knew he would never do me no harm. No one in this city has struck me that way, let's say. I've been in London some time, but my line of business makes me careful about whose pills I accept. This trustworthy doctor has been kind enough to mail them to me all these years."

The label was in Maltese, evidently, and meant nothing to me. "Well, sir, since I am apparently a man of the greatest confidence, you will leave these mysterious pills with me. You will take this." I finished writing down the name of a mild diuretic, "to the pharmacy. When you schedule a full consultation with me, I can confirm that your malady is due to your heart rather than your kidneys."

"You're taking me on?" Mr. Treacher seemed overjoyed. This was more unnerving than his unctuous mode.

"I'm taking your edema on. Good day, sir."

On that occasion, I couldn't bear the thought that withholding a few facts from our archive could result in harm to Holmes or Bruno. The case was easy enough to locate, and any word about jewels given up for lost had to be better than none. So I dispatched one of our errand boys, who was awed at the mere mention of the legendarily elegant restaurant.

Then I scoured the papers to see if any news came up in relation to the case, or especially, my two friends. Just over a week later, I saw a small mention that a Mr. Hugo Barrowman of Bloomsbury was cleared of a charge mistakenly lodged against him by a policeman Henry Arbuckle, who acted precipitately and without full possession of the facts.

"Mr. Barrowman has the apologies of Scotland Yard, and the matter will be investigated further."

I didn't need Sherlock Holmes at my side to point out that cases are dismissed all the time, but apologies from Scotland Yard were rare indeed. But the name had by this time frozen my coffee cup on its path to my lips.

It was the same officer from my case notes, the ones I had examined for Treacher. There was no mistaking the name, and I pawed through my papers to confirm the presence of Henry Arbuckle among the investigating officers on the murder scene. I had gotten in the habit of noting as many officers' names as I could. Holmes believed that these uniformed men were often better witnesses when they took off their helmet and reflected than when their supervisory officer was barking orders on the scene.

At first I was enraged that this issue had nothing at all to do with either of my close friends, and that Treacher had merely led me to think so to enlist my help.

But then I looked into Mr. Hugo Barrowman. I was surprised to find that he was one of the men with whom I'd played cards with at Giorgio's café. He was a pleasant fellow who seemed to be friendly with a great many men without any standing out as his particular friend. Perhaps I did a good thing after all, helping him avoid some morals charge, though I couldn't see how Arbuckle's presence at a murder scene could figure into his mishandling of charges against my fellow card-player. I resolved to think no more about it.

Then about a month later I was at Scotland Yard observing an autopsy at Inspector Lestrade's request, when I met the officer in question.

There are usually lackeys hovering around these proceedings, some taking note of whatever the lead doctor is barking out. Others are there merely to keep some semblance of order, moving inspectors and visitors like me in and out. Though a regular policeman might be called for various reasons to the catacombs, in no case would he be one of those cleaning up afterwards. That takes a different kind of strong stomach. These cleaners were their own breed, I had always thought, and never took them for enlisted men.

Nevertheless, I was conversing with the doctor about the possibility that the deceased had received a rare poison when I heard, "Arbuckle, if you're only going to make things worse, don't even come down."

A green-faced man with the characteristic cleaner's smock was leaning against the wall while holding his nose. "Quick, he's going to faint." The other doctor and I caught the man and wheeled him out on a gurney to fresher air, as none of his fellows seemed inclined to do it.

"You're Mr. Arbuckle?" I asked the man after giving him the smelling salts. The other medical man had rushed off to another engagement.

"Yes, sir. What have I done now?" he asked miserably.

"You're not from the catacombs. Not originally, I mean. You're from the regular force."

"Yes sir. They sent me to work there until I find my lost honor, sir. It's a bloody sight better than I deserve." At the mention of blood, his color went again.

When I revived him once more I whispered into his ear, "Did you steal any of Lady Blankenship's jewels? I must know."

He looked fearfully around at all the workaday sights to be expected in the hallways of Scotland Yard. "Who told you? It's to be blackmail after all, is it? I knew better than to expect a so-called gentleman's agreement to hold."

"I want nothing from you but the truth," I hissed. "Don't you know me? I'm Dr. John Watson. I work with Sherlock Holmes. If an injustice has been done, perhaps I can help."

"No, Doctor. This is far kinder than justice, and they promise me I won't be serving down here forever."

And there in the hallway, with criminals and constables bustling by, some of them greeting me by name, I heard Henry Arbuckle's story. One of his first crime scene assignments after joining the force had made him one of several officers taking stock of the crime scene at Lady Blankenship's home.

No one noticed when he came across a new cache of jewels that the old lady had kept separately from the others. These were much finer than the rest, it was easy for a novice to see. If he'd only taken one or two, no one would have noticed them in his uniform pocket. But he suddenly had to have them all.

The young man said it was like some other part of his mind took over. It told him to say nothing of his find, but to slip the jewelry behind a fire screen until he could make away with it. As the other officers worked, Mr. Arbuckle's eyes happened to fall on the umbrella-stand. He knew that the number of umbrellas and canes in the stand had already been noted, because he'd done it himself. No one was likely to look at it again, not in that mansion crammed with stuff.

The sky threatened rain that day, and so Mr. Arbuckle had left home with his own umbrella in hand—a standard black device indistinguishable with the one in the corner of the mansion.

Taking advantage of a quiet moment, Arbuckle placed the jewels inside the victim's umbrella and then furled it up so that the extra bulk was scarcely noticeable. Then he took his break with the umbrella under his arm and transferred the stolen goods to a temporary location. He came back with the rest of his fish lunch to share with his mates, and while they were eating Lady Blankenship's umbrella was dropped back in the stand. I had to admire how neatly it was done. An umbrella was one of those rare articles like a toothbrush, in that there was little class differentiation to be found between his and that of a member of gentility.

"I knew better than to sell anything right away. I put them in a sock and took them to the bank and tried to forget about them until it was safe to bring them out," Arbuckle explained. By this time I had him on the steps for a smoke. "Sometimes I would look at them, just to prove to myself I did all that. But then I started seeing this young lady, very serious, and I wanted to treat her to a few things. Maybe ask her to marry me. So I bring something to the street that everyone on the force can tell you is for fencers. And zas!" He slashed a hand from the sky, "It was as though someone had known all this time and they were just waiting for me to come out with the goods. I still can't figure it."

"How does this relate to Mr. Hugo Barrowman? I saw your name mentioned in the paper as someone who botched his case," I asked, though of course I knew part of the answer.

"He must have friends in high places, is all. I wasn't even looking to find that that kind of thing, was the funny part of my arresting him. That evening every free officer was spread out looking for a murderer—do you remember Oliver Sykes?"

"Oh yes, dreadful business," I recalled. "You mean you came across men—"

"In one of the municipal stables, fornicating as if there wasn't a murderer on the loose," completed Arbuckle. "I saw him with my own eyes doing to another man something I could never ask a lady to do to me." He shook his head. "The other one ran off, but Barrowman was in less of a position to run, if you catch my meaning. He broke the law making a spectacle like that where anyone could find him doing it, and he deserved to be punished for it."

Arbuckle smiled weakly. "I try to tell myself I would have lost my job and gone to prison if it hadn't been for his connections. The Yard will make me pay for some time yet, but I think I can get back where I was. So you and Mr. Holmes needn't trouble yourselves. I like this better than justice."

The young man got to his feet and soon he was absorbed into the bustle of the law.

I wandered around the city for a long time after that, thinking. Arbuckle had been saved from prison on a significant thievery charge. No doubt such an experience would have ruined the young man's chances for a life. Mr. Hugo Barrowman had done something intimate in an imprudent place (but how many prudent places are there? my mind argued), and he had also been saved some imprisonment, loss of job and reputation.

It was beyond me how Treacher could have traced this line between these two crimes in order to erase them. The idea that his tentacles could reach so far made me feel physically ill. And my impression of the Yard's moral rigor had taken a significant blow for making a bargain with such a man.

Most of all I felt terribly guilty.

That was when the civil war began in me. All because of Treacher. To help or not to help one of those from the men's clubs who recurred to the tavern keeper for aid—either way it was a choice. Someone I liked—for I liked many people on the force as well as in Holmes' new society—could be hurt.

Avoiding Treacher's occasional requests didn't obviate me of any involvement. When he came for his appointments, they were almost always like those for any patient. We talked of his fluid intake and tobacco and alcohol habits. It could be the physician's ability to see all men as the same when lying on a table, but when he was perched on my cot it was difficult to see him as truly evil.

In those moments I believed that he had no idea of the moral knots in which I was entangled. To a man like him, the defenders of the law must not seem like people. Perhaps he is the sort of man to make a decision and forget about it.

I am not. I made a wager with myself—I will flip a coin whether or not I am to answer his request (they came in the form of a blank piece of paper, which meant I should visit his tavern or one of his other haunts if interested) and then flip again to decide whether I will help. Not every time was it a question of a man's reputation being ruined for which café he frequented or what he did in a dark corner outside it. Sometimes, I was sure it was only Treacher's so-called business network at stake, his line of complicit hotels to be protected.

Out of a desire to protect Holmes, or his lover, I had been thrust into the unwanted posts of judge, jury and executioner. It was impossible to go to these parties and not think of the men around me as potentially needing my assistance, and certainly there were some I would not mind helping, while others I had no special feeling for. But then, what of these others—should they suffer what I could never wish upon my friends?

The true import of Holmes' changed allegiance struck me earlier and deeper than it did for him. I'm quite sure it did, when after returning from France he regained his social habits and took me to men's clubs like before. Sometimes I would forget that I was in the company of a class of criminals, vulnerable to the judgment of law and man. Sometimes I thought the only ethical thing was to protect these people from an overly intrusive moral standard. I listened to the bird-calls of Mr. Paul Drummond, or the most excellent jests of the actors, and this entertaining company usually helped me forget the awesome responsibility that had landed unbidden upon my shoulders.

And that is why I despise Mr. Treacher. My observational skills are not at all as famous as those of Sherlock Holmes, but I knew he was objectionable from the first time I laid eyes on him. I was not wrong.

When Holmes returned from Nantes a few days later, still in the process of rebuilding himself, I was determined that he would know nothing about my involvement with Treacher. He should not know that I had enmeshed myself with the idea of saving him from any difficulty. My loyalty to Holmes was something I would never regret, and the joy that Bruno had briefly given him would always be, to me as for him, an unequivocal gift, I thought then.

It seems a significant thing to keep from the highly observant person I saw almost every day, but I was sure Holmes had no idea of this link. The only thing I can say is that I very much did not want him to know.

By the time Holmes took Mr. Treacher on as a client, I had performed several favors and wrestled with rejecting several more.

During our investigation of this strange case, I got proof that Holmes had no idea of my relationship with the man. My friend said off-handedly, "I should warn you, Doctor, that should Treacher ever come calling for some favor, you should say no. It so happens that my own investigation had reached a point that having Treacher as my client suits me very well, but we have no way of knowing how he keeps his little kingdom safe. I am only thankful that he does."

"For your sake I am too. I wish you had never taken the chit from him. I don't like such a person knowing your business," was my reply.

"He knows very little. Bruno has made his position on the subject very clear. It is to his advantage that I carry on a social life as long as there is nothing specific that could compromise him. I respect his work too much to behave otherwise."

The renegade Italian never seemed to express much concern about Holmes' work and reputation, but I bit back my comment. As long as my friend was behaving with discretion, the reason mattered little.

These two days in bed, I wrestled with all the new complications in our lives and did not come to any clear conclusions. I left my bed with the resolution to be watchful while seeing this case through. And my participation was essential, because without my acting as "interpreter," according to Holmes, the man central to our case could scarcely get two words out together.

The big man appeared on our doorstep in response to my summons delivered to the theater.

"We should like to hear about any previous brushes with the law," I informed him a little nervously. I didn't relish the idea of hearing an escapade like Hugo Barrowman's related from the protagonist.

"Well, Doctor, the only night I spent in jail was because of one of those shows—you know, where the men dress like ladies and the ladies dress like men."

Of course I had seen brief sketches performed like this, but I couldn't hold back my surprise. "You were performing in such a spectacle?"

He grinned. "No, sir. I was stagehand, like always, but when the police come I had a pile of dresses on my shoulder, so they figured it was close enough and dragged me in with all the rest. It was made to go away and they let me out the next day."

"'Made to go away.' And who managed that?" Holmes inquired.

Stanley's mutism returned and nothing would make him divulge the identity of his protector.

"Very well," Holmes waved his pipe. "Several names come to mind, but that is less important than the fact that you would have no way to avoid sharing your address on that occasion."

"I did Mr. Holmes, but I realized after I left here the last time that I didn't tell you—the police don't know my true abode. You see, there is a lodging-house for foreign workingmen such as myself. I stayed there when I first came to this city, before I got my boat. It's also a place where some of the boat people go when there's a particular kind of driving rain and wind that upsets the water so that you can get no rest.

"'I thought I might be seeing you this evening,' the Pole who runs the establishment usually says when I come with a few neighbors seeking shelter. Anyone who knows our ways can recognize that type of weather that will drive us inland. By this I mean that the police think of me as one of the men who moves from lodging house to lodging house, but it wouldn't be too hard to see that I come ashore with all the others and don't reappear for months at a time."

"Because you're a canal dweller, yes I see," Holmes said. "And the other infractions?"

For some reason I was relieved to find that most other incidents had happened because the big, obviously foreign man, dressed untidily as he usually was, was taken by a passing officer to be a wrongdoer intruding in higher circles with the intent to commit a theft.

"And then once I drink too much and they find me in a park," he said shamefacedly.

Holmes brought his fist down on the table, startling both me and Stanley.

"This simply will not do. A man has developed a fascination for you, Stanley, and yet you share no occasions upon which he has approached you. No skulker is so well-behaved if his target is female, and so why should he be with a man who is much more accessible, given the lack of social niceties separating them? You have had no other run-ins with the law—or anyone out of the ordinary? No one inserting themselves into your habits with some ingratiating attitude?"

The placid face thought for a moment. "Well this was not pleasant, but a man attacked me once as I was walking home from Giorgio's."

"Attacked you! Well, why didn't you say so?"

"Do continue," I urged our guest, shooting Holmes a look.

"Well, because you asked me all the times the law came at me, not if I was ever the one asking them for help." Stanley turned to me and ignored the other presence in the room. "It did strike me as rather strange, because I'm not a small man, Doctor, so people don't try it with me often. And when they do, they get the better of me less often still. The fact that I'd had a few drinks only served to make me angrier, and we exchanged a few blows with everything we had behind them. Then at the first police whistle, he was off. Faster than I could blink he was down the street, and I'm not a slow man, either. If I hadn't been so busy watching him run I would have been close to catching him myself."

"Excellent," Holmes said over his tented fingers.

"This left me with the officer asking why I'd been raising a fuss and who I'd done it with, for my shirt was torn and my nose bloodied, and it's difficult for a man to do that to himself."

"Your shirt torn, you say?"

"Yes, I looked like I was the one had been brawling but said I'd been unjustly attacked walking down the street. The copper was an evenhanded sort, he said neither yes nor no but he let me go with something that could have been a warning to not break the law or have it broken at me. He didn't seem the kind to be drawn to me."

"Do you still possess this shirt?"

"No, I doubt it, Mr. Holmes. Any piece of cloth is used to clean my paintbrushes."

"Pity. Is it very much like the one you're wearing now? I would like to examine it, if I may."

Stanley made as if to remove his ever-present vest. "Ah, leave it just the way you would normally wear it." Our guest sat red-faced while Holmes turned his attention upon the Slavic attire favored by the subject of scrutiny.

Holmes moved back to his chair. "You remember nothing about your assailant?"

"No. Except that he fought like a man who knew very well what he was about."

"Such as a boxer," I suggested.

"Or something like it. He wasn't as big as I, not near as big, but wiry. And fast."

"Yes, you mentioned fast," Holmes drawled as he exhaled a mouthful of smoke.

"You think there's something in the man who attacked me? I thought we were looking at the police."

"A member of the force can find out any crime that was committed in the city, if he is at all good at what he does," was the only thing Holmes would say about it.

"If that will be all, Doctor, I've got to give one more look to my canvases."

Holmes mumbled something and sat smoking and staring at the ceiling.

I rose. "Stanley, I haven't had a chance to thank you for taking care of me the other night. If it hadn't been for you, I could have faced my own charge of disturbing the peace."

"It was nothing. You'd have done the same for me, Doctor." He bowed formally, one of his mannerisms that made me think he wasn't a footman, and he left.

Holmes poured us each a drink and then began to think aloud.

"We have the near certainty that it must be a member of the police force who is writing these letters, the last one proving that the object is not to create uneasiness, but to keep Stanley safe.

"And yet, from the moment our friend described his attack, I was relatively sure that it was committed by his protector."

"But why would his admirer attack him?"

"Several possibilities occur to me. Because he admired Stanley's strength from afar, and wished to experience it for himself? Because he wanted to wrest a token, a piece of cloth or hair, from the man for whom he has a hopeless attraction? Perhaps he was enraged that Stanley did not return his affection, for which he has made overtures that may not have registered. It could be he has left other clues and your friend has not noticed them."

"My friend is not subnormal, Holmes. You treat him very harshly."

"I do no such thing. The question came to me—is this officer aware of the observation upon this section of town because he is part of a task force, or because he makes it his business to know what happens in relation to this section?"

"I believe it would be very difficult for someone outside of the morality campaign to know ahead of time when there would be a raid," I said. "Not impossible, but unlikely. And this person was able to get a message to Stanley's boat early in the morning, because he remembered stepping over a bit of trash he thought had blown from a neighboring boat, since it never even crossed his mind it would be a letter."

"Precisely, Watson. I've been asking the other members of the stage crew, the costume mistresses and lamp lighters, if they've noticed anything unusual. They did not, and from what I observed backstage, only someone like Stanley who knows the routines could successfully hide in such a busy locale."

"Besides, a policeman on this special detail would often be working at night," I pointed out. "He would thus be unavailable during the shows to skulk around in hopes of seeing a stagehand."

"Agreed, Watson. I had been hoping to avoid letting the authorities know I was involved with some investigation in this part of town, because they would inevitably ask to join forces." We exchanged a wry smile at that uncomfortable possibility. "But with no other alternative, I asked Lestrade at the Yard about a fictitious case having to do with an accusation about a corrupt member of the force. There is no better way than to puff up someone from Scotland Yard than to impugn his own men.

"'There's not a bad apple among them!' he exclaimed, leading me into the room where the Yard keeps track of men's personal information, hours worked, and the like. 'You take a look at their records—we run a clean maneuver here, and I stake my reputation on it.'

"He stood there fuming while he let me look, and as I had some idea what I was looking for, my curiosity was soon satisfied.

"I apologized profusely and left."

"What were you looking for?" I asked.

"Stanley described the old patrolman as a fair sort. That led me to think that our man had worked with this constable before he was moved to the Yard, and he felt it likely that this seasoned copper would not go overly harsh on a foreigner. Then I inquired if there were any constables from that district who had been promoted to Scotland Yard in the last few years. As you know, it's a rare enough occurrence.

"There were two. I had their names in mind, one a young man by the name of Percy Daschle and the other an equally young Mr. Hiram Green. Mr. Green will rise fast because he's a hard worker, as indicated by the large number of hours on his employee record. Mr. Daschle will rise faster still, I believe, because he had no assignments on his ticket, leaving me to think they were being tallied in a separate account."

"Such as this morality force."

"Exactly. I was already leaning strongly towards Mr. Percy because my other line of investigation had him in a pool of possibilities."

"And this was—?"

"Policemen who participate in the amateur sports leagues. At first I thought wrestling, but any member of the Yard should know how to fight. It was the foot racing competition. Your friend Stanley was most insistent that the man was startlingly fast."

"What else did you find out about this Percy?" I inquired.

"He has been on this special force for six months, judging from the last entry on his card. Stanley's only official arrest at that theater happened last year, so young Percy could have been impressed by him at that time but found it impossible to locate him. Stanley is remarkably good at keeping to himself. A nearly mute eccentric is someone nobody notices. Even a besotted young officer might find this attention-getting posture to be the ultimate disguise, and one that leaves few clues in his wake."

"I hardly think Stanley's affliction is a ruse," I reproached Holmes.

He ignored me. "Another possibility is that something changed in Mr. Daschle's situation, and he was suddenly emboldened to seek out this strange figure but wished to stop short of actually following him from one of his theater assignments. Stanley is a large individual, and there is no indication that he would welcome an overture from another man.

Holmes made an impatient gesture. "All of this is mere speculation. But one thing we do know is that Percy was assigned to the morality detail. I wager that he asked for the assignment because he was curious about these men, without thinking he might be one. Or it was an excuse to find out more, without venturing there on his own accord. Certainly he has advanced his career by the number of people upon whom he has thrown suspicion."

Holmes flourished his pipe. "At one of these clandestine meeting spots he sees Stanley again. His heart leaps—there is hope for what had seemed a hopeless infatuation. But the man in question seems scarcely aware of his surroundings and does not notice whatever overtures are made by a lawman who is charged with stamping out such behavior.

"Nevertheless, Mr. Daschle watches all of these men enjoying each other's company and it begins to work upon him. His emotions rise further to the surface. But as he sees more of his secret attraction, this young policeman decides he cannot allow anything to happen to this one man. But he does not wish to reveal that there is a member of the police force who has penetrated the inner circles and is divulging sensitive information. He confines himself to telling Stanley's friends, after the fact, that they have been observed. We know that Stanley has few friends—"

"Holmes!"

"All I mean, Doctor, is that no one knows him well enough to mention the contents of their warning letter to him. After a time, this begins to become a torment to Percy Daschle, who wishes to get closer to Stanley but knows better than anyone that such intimacy is exceedingly risky for anyone, and even more so for a policeman."

"This is all very well, Holmes, but where does this interloper make his observations?" I interrupted. "Surely someone at the Yard could have told you what he looked like?"

"He is a young man of slim build with red hair and blue eyes, of about your height," Holmes said. He held up his hand, "The red hair would be easily remembered, and thus it would be the first thing one would disguise before undertaking a covert operation. He is also clean-shaven, as are most young men at the Yard, so I would naturally look for false whiskers."

"Or perhaps a scar," my mind was running through the disguises Holmes had used in the past.

My friend let me mention several possibilities before I caught his look of futility. "You mean you have a description of the man you seek, and though you've surely crossed paths more than once, you can't discover him?"

"If it weren't for his conflicted romantic feelings, I'd say he had a bright future ahead of him at the Yard," Holmes shrugged. "If neither I nor Treacher has spotted him, this young officer must be a master of disguise."

"This man can't go on sitting in a close circle of friends, calmly gathering information so that he can turn them into the police! And to think he is making a career out of such treachery, when all the while he harbors the same inclinations." Such an audacious plan was almost unthinkable.

"Some of our friends have already fallen, and there's no way to know who will be next," Holmes said. "For this reason, my plan to confront this person at the dance still stands."

I'd almost forgotten about the event with everything else that had been going on. "Mr. Limstock! I haven't checked on his feet in several days."

"Not to worry, Watson. I saw him moving around very well in a pair of hideous boots."

"Then he will have his evening, I suppose." I paused. "But Holmes, why is it necessary to draw in dozens of men to an event that is undoubtedly going to be raided by the police?"

"For exactly that reason. For men of sentiment," the detective raised an eyebrow at me, "These balls are intensely meaningful. Percy Daschle will not be able to keep himself away, and what's more, he will be obeying his heart rather than his head. This puts me to the advantage at last. In such a confined area I will be able to unmask him before he makes some kind desperate overture to the object of his affections."

"If he's part of the officials who've come for a raid, that will give you little time," was my observation.

"Oh no. Percy will be at the event itself, as he is comfortable mixing with this society. And because it will be the best way to get close to Stanley."

"You can't use Stanley as bait," I objected.

"We've already discussed it, Doctor. I have his complete cooperation. Or rather, he nodded at appropriate intervals."

Holmes and I encountered Stanley a few days after that at one of these actor's gatherings to which I was so addicted. This was very much Stanley's group as well, so although we did not plan to meet, we did spend a little time in that companionable silence that two people with limited social graces can easily slip into.

The detective talked with Stanley far more than I.

But I was the one who was attacked coming out of my surgery the next afternoon.

As Stanley had remarked about his nocturnal attack, this maneuver in broad daylight was so efficiently carried out and so quickly abandoned that it was impossible to say who had enacted it.

My significant head injury also complicated matters, but that didn't stop Holmes pestering me from my hospital bedside. I had no idea what he was trying to drum into my cracked skull, but I clearly saw his expression.

Sherlock Holmes was livid.

This was a wondrous enough expression to see on my friend's familiar face, but then I finally made the bulk hanging in the corner out to be Stanley.

He brought out neither of his two expressions for the occasion. Quietly, he sat in the corner until he finally reached up a big paw and drew Holmes away from the ear into which he'd been pouring a great number of indecipherable syllables.

The next day when the police came to visit my bedside, I suddenly regained my command of the English language well enough to communicate that I remembered nothing.

Holmes came to collect me the next day. "Is the amnesia as bad as you've let on, or have you been waiting to tell me something?" he asked grimly on the cab ride home.

"Only that you were right about my injured leg affecting my balance. He knocked me to one side and then pummeled me all the way down."

"He went for your face, not your body, Watson. He broke your nose and could have done worse if he'd had more time. This was our man."

My face was a mass of bruises. I counted myself lucky my assailant hadn't taken any teeth at souvenirs. "He must have seen Stanley and me sitting together for all of ten minutes the other night, but then why didn't he go after you as well, Holmes?"

The sleuth gave a bitter smile. "I should have understood this man from the beginning. He is romantically obsessed, yes, but he's been slowly eliminating the competition, so to speak. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this entire task force was somehow set into motion by our Percy."

"An entire morality campaign? But it's just Stanley!" I exclaimed. "I think he's a very fine man, but scarcely anyone else in the city knows that. A man, a policeman, would instigate this witch hunt, ruin the lives and livelihoods of men with whom he has a passing acquaintance, all to get close to a man most people take for a simpleton?"

"Ah, Watson, you may be insensible to Mr. Stanley's charms, but others may not be." His face darkened. "I will not forgive myself for ignoring this danger that should have been evident to me. You will by no means attend the dance."

"But Holmes, I should very much like to see it."

"And that is a very foolish reason to risk another attack from a lovesick young man. Stanley and I can manage things very well for ourselves."

"You've involved him in some plot of yours? Then I absolutely insist upon being there. What if he should need to speak to you? The way you bark at him is completely unconscionable."

Sherlock Holmes sighed in exasperation. "I speak to Friend Stanley exactly the way I have spoken to aristocrats and beggars and everyone in between. It's not my fault that he loses the faculty of speech around everyone but you."

"Then it's settled." He sat in the chair in the corner of my room and we glared at each other until Mrs. Hudson came to fuss over my bandages.


	4. Chapter 4

As the seventh approached, Holmes abandoned his supervision of my convalescence. Such a formidable nursemaid was less than relaxing, so I contented myself with knowing that he was gone almost all the time, the master of intrigue at the center of his mystery once more.

The bandages were slowly coming off, apart from the one keeping my nose in place. I was back at work and I kept my evening suit brushed and ready. One afternoon an urchin delivered a message to my surgery.

"Tonight at 8. You will find instructions."

With a strange sense of anticipation, I rushed home as early as I could, bathed and found another note under my shaving-brush. "The eastern end of the warehouse district. Take a carriage only so far as the point indicated on this map. Avoid the sentry that Iverson's Soaps maintains near their storehouses. Follow the footpath exactly, as it will be very dark. Speak to no one, even a friend, and arrive singly to the door. By all means, do not take a boutonniere if offered.

"Your pupil will be inside with his observational faculties no longer affected by disruptions to his inner ear. And your partner this evening will be your trusty revolver."

It had been some time since I had attended a ball, and so I finished the rest of my preparations with a light heart before donning a simple overcoat. Holmes had told me not to wear the evening shoes so coveted by our friend Mr. Limstock, as they drew too much attention under my coat.

"A late-night call, doctor?" Mrs. Hudson asked sleepily as she saw me go out. "Are you sure that's wise in your condition?"

That was the best impression I could hope for, and I walked a little ways to find a cab and follow the rest of the instructions, my sense of anticipation growing.

Once the cab let me off, my eyes were able to discern a few shadows stumbling around in the darkness, broken by the occasional flare of a match. One by one we arrived at the door in silence. Though I didn't know the man at the entrance and I opened my mouth to give my name, he put his finger to his lips and motioned me through the rough wooden door.

It was like walking into another world. The soft sounds of Mozart greeted my ears while my eyes adjusted to the light in the dimly lit room that seemed to have stood empty as if waiting for this strange occasion. There were a large number of players, not all of them for the stringed music we then heard. There were also men with other instruments appropriate for the polka and the mazurka, more cheerful dances that benefited from the addition of a concertina and brass instruments.

There were candles and lamps everywhere—on top of what must be boxes covered with white cloths. Smaller boxes and crates were set up before these makeshift tables, and a few men were sitting down, their tailcoats dangling close to the sawdust that still littered the floor.

It was a breathtaking study in contrasts. So much so that I didn't notice a man seated near the door asking me, "Would you like one?" He offered a small flower and gestured to my buttonhole.

Remembering Holmes' instruction, I gave a polite negative and moved to the group of men who were standing near the musicians. "This is extraordinary," I said to a familiar face as more men appeared as if by magic and the music swelled. "I didn't know what to expect, but it promises to be a singular evening. It's Carl, isn't it?"

"Yes, Doctor, I believe I took a few pounds from you once at cards. I'm not sure who organized this one, but they did a fine job."

Unconsciously, I had been looking for Stanley but didn't find him. It was only when the strings swelled that I saw the big man wielding the violin in his great hands that seemed to dwarf the instrument.

He was so much a piece of the musical section that I hadn't seen him, though I should have, because he was dressed in his usual mismatched outfit with a green vest that didn't belong with his indefatigable evening coat, his hair pulled back in its signature messy knot.

Though I tried to smile at him, he kept his eyes fixed elsewhere. I took this as his resolve not to bring any more jealous rage in my direction, and then I touched the bandage on my nose. I'd forgotten it was there, but to my friend it must be a reminder of the unhinged person who was somewhere in our very midst.

Other men would end up taking turns standing in for Angus, the master violin player everyone knew well in the clubs, who must have ended up with an engagement on this evening. Stanley would be relieved for several of the softer waltzes and brought back in for the polkas and mazurkas, which naturally he would know well from his homeland.

Though the dancers followed with a lively step, I saw only steely resolve in the man handling the violin.

From the time the first dance started, I made sure to be in a corner. For it was the first time since Holmes introduced me to this world that it felt strange to me. As many couples as could fit took the floor, each of the men with a flower in his lapel taking the passive role. The music urged them into motion. Once my eye got used to the evenly matched dark suits and male figures, I had to admit, the proceedings were as graceful as at any ball I had attended.

It also took me a moment to realize that Holmes was among the beflowered men, and that he was dancing with complete ease while he talked with the young Mr. Limstock, moving quite normally on his feet, I was proud to say. He also wore a boutonniere but danced the man's part very well. The boy was obviously beside himself with pleasure at taking a turn with his idol, but Holmes' grey eyes were darting about in a businesslike manner, though he dedicated a wink to me.

As explained to me at the door, there was no drinking—carting away the evidence would be more difficult with bottles. And there was no smoking, out of fear of fire, if done on the inside, or fear of calling attention to the event, if men were clustered on the outside. Nevertheless, I didn't think of my deprivation because there were so many things to see. I knew some of the men as settled couples, and others who were unfamiliar had the same air about them that I associated with Bruno and Holmes. But some were like our young friend with the unfortunate feet, and were whispering the corners and striding up to one another with nervous bravado, asking for the pleasure of the next dance.

With very few exceptions, the revelers moved in perfect harmony. Those of us clustered around the edges could only admire the men at the center. The numbers of those inside the dusty space never exceeded 80, I don't think, although not all could dance at the same time. Nearly everyone took a turn, however, as there was little reason to go to so much trouble unless one intended to dance. Counting the various watchmen I sensed rather than saw on the way in, that would make perhaps 100 suspects, I was calculating, when a voice was at my ear.

"May I have this dance, Watson?"

"No, Holmes, I told you—"

"You said you couldn't imagine dancing with a man other than me. Happily, my card is free." A commanding arm forced me onto the dance floor and then we once more relaxed into our habitual postures. The music did the rest. "I wished to speak to you, and this is the best way to do it.

"When things begin to happen—and they will very soon—you have been helping me with a case. Do not say anything about what this case is until I declare it. You may, however, freely express your opinion about Mr. Treacher."

"Mr. Treacher?" The name caused a wave of disgust that threatened the fragile gentility of the evening.

"Perfect, Watson. Thank you to my instructor who has made everything possible." He bowed at the end of the dance. I bowed and retreated to my corner.

"Mr. Holmes is a remarkable man to have on our side," a man said.

"The two of you made a fine pair," someone I didn't know said. "I can tell from the way he moves with you that you know each other well."

My reply came stiffly. "We are old friends, as you might have heard me write repeatedly in my chronicles."

"I apologize on my friend's behalf, Dr. Watson," one of my card-playing acquaintances said with emphasis.

"Oh!" the man exclaimed. "I am sorry, Doctor. I thought you might be another of Sherlock Holmes' companions who I've also heard much about."

"I can't think who you mean, but please be aware that not everything Mr. Holmes does is as it seems," I advised him, and anyone else in earshot.

There was a sound of voices and scuffling outside the door. The dancing couples all jumped away from each other and were standing as if in established conversation while the music played on. A few kicked at the sawdust to erase any evidence of their movements.

Lestrade forced his way in with a knot of constables at his back. As the music died away he took in the orchestra and then the elegantly dressed men scattered across the open space.

"Lestrade, so glad you could make it to my little demonstration," Holmes called out.

There were murmurs among the guests along the wall, and one of the men to whom I had been talking gave me a reproachful glance while inching away. The men on the dance floor held their ground, however.

'Yes, well, I had heard of these types of gatherings," Lestrade looked around nervously, "But I should very much like to charge someone less distinguished with the crime of taking over private property for iniquitous purposes." His eyes raked over the dapper Mr. Limstock.

No one moved. Being stared at by dozens of men in evening dress was evidently not the usual way for these raids, and Lestrade seemed at a loss. He finally picked me out in my corner.

"Doctor Watson, is that you there? I do hope you can make some sense of this latest stunt from your friend."

"We're on a case, Inspector. What else do you expect us to be doing on a fine summer evening?"

"Ah, so it's a case. I had feared that all these men were your confidential patients and this your new surgery." The news of a report of untoward behavior fishing me out of a hotel in the midst of delivering medical care had apparently reached every corner of Scotland Yard.

"No inspector, this is a case, and in criminal matters I follow Mr. Holmes' lead."

There were chuckles at my reference to the reversed roles on the dance floor, and Lestrade looked around confused. "Well, on with it, Mr. Holmes, what is this supposed case? We'll be up all night charging all those here with attending an illegal gathering for even more illegal purposes."

"The location might be unconventional, but the bohemian sensibility is notoriously ungovernable," Holmes drawled. "There is no crime in standing about and listening to music, I hope." He gestured to the players and they took up a soft tune.

"I need hardly ask the obvious, but it seems I must. Where are the ladies at this grand affair, Holmes?"

"Out of harm's way. You would scarcely wish me to expose gentlewomen to danger, Inspector."

"Danger? I would say they'd be in no danger at all from these ones." There was sordid laughter.

"See here, I was led here under false pretenses and should like to go home." A number of men from the sidelines took up the cry. "Are we being charged for listening to music? If not, kindly stop barring the doorway."

"Gentlemen." The complaints died away at Holmes' ringing voice. "There is an imposter in our midst."

The guests looked around. The idea that someone had turned informant among the men's clubs had occurred to everyone at some point.

"Ah, so you know about our man in the inside? I should have expected as much, Mr. Holmes," gloated Lestrade. "Our Mr. Daschle has an extraordinary knack for observing without being observed. He'll have a long, bright future at the Yard, I predict."

I was still helpless to see about whom they were talking, and my eyes were wheeling around the room without finding where to land. Stanley was no help—he merely stood there with no expression to orient me.

"I'm afraid that is where you and I disagree, Inspector," said Holmes. "Percy Daschle's rise at Scotland Yard will be cut short because he is guilty of a crime. My exercise this evening provided the final proof of his guilt. Perhaps Mr. Daschle would like to confess for himself, unless he would have me produce the evidence."

Holmes' eyes had been staring up at the ceiling, but then he wheeled upon the orchestra section. Like a beagle he pointed his narrow body straight at the young man who had been playing the concertina. "It is your choice, Mr. Daschle," Holmes said softly.

The other musicians were recoiling from the face that even I had to admit was not unfamiliar to me. "We had a drink and a laugh more than once, Tim," a flute player said reproachfully.

"I got you signed on as an alternate for the summer shows at the pavilion," a clarinet player said.

"No, Tim, not you. You were happy with us. I know it," another man said. "It could have been about making connections, the way some musicians will play with anyone. But for you it was something else."

"Then I fooled you all," Percy's voice rang out for the first time. He had indeed dyed his hair but otherwise had wisely trusted in his musical instrument as his only shield. "I have no need for this type of company," he said in a voice thick with scorn.

"Nor do I," Lestrade broke in. "Percy has done a fine job rooting out some of the corruption hidden in our city, but may we follow my programme now, Mr. Holmes?"

No one else knew to focus on the violinist, but my eyes were riveted upon Stanley. The young policeman had nearly killed me for my friendship with this Slavic shadow. I knew that the events converging on this dance had been about nothing else but this romantic obsession.

Stanley stood up to his full height and laid his instrument carefully on the chair. For a moment I thought he was walking quietly over to Percy to strike him for what he did to me. Instead, he passed by the concertina player without a look and took up a stance near me—close enough that his admirer would see his preference, but still a respectful distance away.

Percy Daschle had his gun drawn on me in a second.

"It's to be this one, is it?" he snarled in a very different tone. "What is it about him? He doesn't even go in for— things like that!"

Inspector Lestrade and his fellows didn't know what was happening. Up until that point I felt content to ride along with another of Holmes' plans, but it was quite unnerving to see that Stanley and Holmes exchanged a look of surprise. I prefer my confederates to have a steady pulse when a gun is trained on me.

"Shoot me," Stanley said with unusual clarity. "I cannot love you and would rather die than be close to you."

The young man's face crumbled. Percy's weapon wavered between the two of us. "But only I know you, who you are on the inside," he whimpered. "No one else knows. I can tell by the way they treat you. But I know. We can go away together."

"Never," said the accented voice.

"You have heard the man, Mr. Daschle, and he says your suit is quite impossible," said Holmes. "I recommend that you give up your weapon and surrender yourself to the mercy of Inspector Lestrade. He will be very interested to hear about your attack on Dr. Watson and your monomaniacal campaign to tarnish the reputations of dozens of men, so that you might eliminate the competition for this one," he pointed to Stanley. "And this gentleman, Stanislaus Slezko, has been most uncivilly hounded by Mr. Daschle, who has followed his quarry on numerous occasions out of a desire to be close to him."

This surprised me, but Stanley stood solid before the gun. "Yes, I do not countenance those who invade my privacy," he said with a note of danger. I was proud he got the whole long word out without stuttering.

This made Percy falter even more, and Holmes thought it was an opportune moment to try and disarm him.

The shot rang out and the concertina player fell to the floor.

There were noises of shock and horror as the guests backed away from the grisly sight of the suicide, some of them with their evening attire spattered in blood.

Inspector Lestrade and I reached the body at the same time, and he knelt, watching me examine the lad before I shook my head.

"Percy was a bright young thing," Lestrade confided in me. "I have no doubt now that he must have been a few things more than that, but he'd worked his way up from nothing. I take especial care of my men with such determination."

He got to his feet and faced Holmes. "There really was a corrupt policeman when you came to visit me," he said.

"Yes indeed," the detective said. "The late Mr. Daschle had been importuning Mr. Stanislaus Slezsko for quite some time, but the young man was so fast on his feet that even a very fit man such as Mr. Slezsko could never catch him."

"Yes, Percy was very athletic," Inspector Lestrade said in a dazed tone.

"For a long time I was not sure of Mr. Daschle's identity, because I, like so many others, accepted any musician as having a right to be wherever he was. But I have received some confidential information about men who have been followed or struck, all of them after leaving a room that contained the silent Mr. Stanislaus Slezko. These attacks happened at night, unlike Dr. Watson's, which occurred in broad daylight."

"Confidential?" Lestrade was stuck on the word. "You should have come forward with this information, Mr. Holmes."

"And my clients absolutely forbade me to," the detective returned. "You see my difficulty in proving this persecution. And moreover, my instincts told me that your promising young officer was completely unhinged, but instincts mean nothing without proof. This was why I undertook the somewhat unorthodox step of organizing this social event. Mr. Slezko's persecutor wouldn't miss the opportunity to observe his target in such a setting."

"You!" This was one step too far for the much-tried Lestrade, and many men in the audience were murmuring in surprise as well. "Holmes, you invaded this—"

"It's an edifice for storing used saddles, old carriages and the like before they can be shipped to less-discerning regions for refitting. The owner rented it to me for a very reasonable fee." He produced a document and handed it to the inspector.

"Well that may be very well, but I'll leave it up to a magistrate to decide who's to be held responsible for those perilous lamps. Not to mention a herd of men and only men tromping about!"

"You will hold me responsible, and no one else," the detective said with quiet authority. "These men are my confederates. Gentlemen," he gestured and the men on the dance floor each produced a small violet envelope on cue.

The officers who had been standing paralyzed snapped into action to collect them.

"And what are these?"

"Letters contracting these actors for their services. You'll find the bundle of them postmarked several weeks back. I brought them in one receptacle to the post office—the attendant will surely remember them."

"Actors? Well that's hardly an endorsement of innocence. And what about these fellows?" Lestrade gestured to the men who had been gravitating to the wall.

"Some of them can furnish you with letters, but the rest are yours, are they not, Inspector?" There were gasps. "Either in your employ or convinced to become informants as a way of avoiding prosecution?"

There were two faces among that group that I knew relatively well. They stood utterly abandoned between their former friends and the police who were slow to claim them.

"The young man should be transported," I said quietly to whomever might listen.

"Yes, Dr. Watson, thank you. You lot," Inspector Lestrade pointed at his officers, "Take everyone's name and address when you collect their letters. We shall no doubt have more questions for these individuals."

He turned to my friend, who was gazing placidly at this strange evening rending at the seams. "Mr. Holmes, you've got a few things to answer for about this supposed persecution. I still can't see Mr. Daschle doing the sort of thing he was so skilled at exposing."

"Oh, Mr. Slezko will be providing you with a complete list of incidents."

Stanley stepped forward and for some reason directed a nervous glance in my direction. "I suggest you take Mr. Slezko's statement at the station. It will be a very long process, I fear."

Holmes twitched his lip at me, and I smiled at the poor man who would be forced to draw out every word.

After remaining suspended as if in midair, everyone sprang into action. Stanley was led off into a carriage and a different vehicle came to claim the former Mr. Percy Daschle.

In no time at all, the dancers had been dispatched on their separate ways. Holmes and I extinguished the lights and tidied the warehouse before he locked it behind us.

"All along, it was you organizing the dance!" I finally burst out.

"No, Watson. For some time I tried very hard to prevent this very foolish event from taking place. But it was as I said—no one claimed to be in charge of it. That was when I got the idea of making this ball my own. It was the surest way to see which men were very confused by the competing rumors I started about it. In no time at all these people surrendered their plans to mine, and for the last few weeks, yes, we have been discussing my own affair."

"And you did this because the other event could have been sprung on you at any time?" I asked as we hailed a cab.

"In part, yes, not being able to plan was vexing me greatly. But I also wished to hold an entirely legal gathering, and to do this I must have the documentation myself."

"But I don't understand, Holmes. You couldn't have announced this ball with much notice, and thus only the men available at that moment would attend. How could you have contracted all of the dancers ahead of time?"

"That was where your instruction made the entire evening possible," my friend said with a grin. "As a sought-after passive partner, I was able to dance with the greatest number of men, and anyone with whom I did not make contact surely danced with one of them. In no time at all, these small yet recognizable envelopes were slipped in my partners' pockets and from their pockets to their companions'."

I laughed at the brilliance of it. "But the postmark—"

"Took a bit more work but is authentic. The bundle was delivered to the actor's guild, where actors have some reason to visit rather frequently. It would not be unheard of for someone to contract a bunch of actors, sight unseen."

We rode some way in silence. "I didn't know the boy would take his own life," Holmes said suddenly. "It wasn't one of the options I had envisioned for him."

We alighted at Baker Street and changed out of our fancy clothes. Only then did I see mine had been tainted by blood.

Holmes had my drink poured for me and I took it eagerly. We sat in the late-night quiet for some time.

"I did not wish to unmask a man who was, after all, not unlike myself," he finally said.

"Mr. Daschle was nothing like you," I reproached.

"None of us knows what we will feel driven to, Watson. At any rate, I did not like to expose his romantic predilections without giving him a choice. This was why I instructed you to remain vague about our particular case. It was Percy who decided the nature of our case."

My tired brain could not comprehend this. "Did you ever speak to the man before you exposed him?"

"No. You heard every word I directed to the young man. If you recall, I said that I had absolute proof of his crime, and that if he wished, I would provide that proof."

I nodded and took another well-deserved sip. "You look so comfortable, Watson, but I must ask you to retrieve your evening jacket."

With a sigh, I did so, placing the garment before the detective. With a flourish, he extracted a good-sized pearl.

"You must have put that in my pocket when we were in the cab!" I protested.

"No, Doctor, I did not. You did not require a letter of engagement, but you received this jewel the same way everyone else did, along with their letters. If Percy had chosen to let me assign him the responsibility for a very different crime, he would have been found guilty of absconding with some jewels he found while sorting through evidence at a crime scene."

"Oh yes?" I said tiredly. "Why would you have to distribute the evidence in everyone's pocket?"

"Because that was how Daschle was supposed to have absconded with the late Lady Blankenship's string of magnificent," said my friend. "He was to have quietly cut this long strand of most excellent pearls and transported them bit by bit to his pockets while he was ostensibly cataloguing a bookcase. They were still so many that it would have created an obvious bulk in his pocket, so he also slipped some of the pearls into the pockets of his fellow officers, who noticed not a thing when the pearls were put in nor when they were taken out."

"That's impossible!" I scoffed.

"No, no, Watson. Percy was a very accomplished pickpocket. Only a daring person would try to pick the pocket of an imposing man like Stanley. The only reason why our perpetrator did not retrieve his goal from Stanley's pocket was that he got flustered being so close to his obsession."

"What? You mean the attack on Stanley was a robbery?"

"It must have been. When your friend was finally able to tell me so, he told me that he'd been sketching that evening when he was out at the café. If he's pleased with the result, sometimes he gives the subject his drawing."

"This is Stanley's habit, yes," I confirmed. "You think he had been sketching Mr. Daschle! And the policeman was worried about being unmasked."

"Not quite. Percy could go wherever he liked—he was ostensibly gathering information for the authorities. I believe that the young man was very disappointed not to be given the sketch, and he was consumed with curiosity about how Stanley perceived him. The real object was the vest pocket, but the attacker missed his target."

"Poor Stanley," I suddenly thought of how unpleasant his trip to the station last night must have been. "Did he know who his pursuer was before this evening?"

"We had begun to piece together a few things after you were assaulted," Holmes agreed. "He finally recalled that he had been sketching some musicians that evening that he was attacked, and things began to fall into place. If he'd kept the sketchbook, instead of using leaves of it to catch drips of paint, we would have arrived at the conclusion much sooner."

"He was prepared to receive some kind of violence from this admirer. I could see it in his eyes," I said. "You should be thankful. Stanley is the best collaborator you could hope for, Holmes. Almost as good as I, who was not warned of the possibility of violence and stood there calmly before the muzzle all the same."

"Since none of Stanley's fears materialized this evening, I do believe he is satisfied with the result," Holmes said lightly. "Now, go to bed while I decide if I can live with the outcome as well."

It was a very restful night, but when I woke up I was beset with uneasiness. Was it a bad dream? No, I didn't recall anything specific.

It was rather late when I emerged in the parlor. Mrs. Hudson, in her infinite wisdom, had foregone the more fragile early morning breakfast items and had some more substantial, meatier fare on the table.

Holmes was eating while reading a newspaper. I watched him for some time while our conversation from last evening reconstituted in my mind.

"Holmes? Where did you get that string of pearls?"

"Mmm? Oh, Mr. Treacher lent them to me."

"Mr. Treacher." Of course. It was a Treacher-y bad taste in my mouth when I woke up. "And how did your exalted friend acquire these splendid pearls?"

"From the thief who stole them from Lady Blankenship's mansion, of course," he said with his nose still buried in the paper.

The name had not registered with me the night before, but now I was perfectly aware of the connection to the little tavern-keeper.

"Percy Daschle was at the scene of the crime, though he did not appear in our notes for some reason," Holmes continued. "Perhaps he came with a different shift."

"And this thief simply lent them to Mr. Treacher, to keep on hand should a consulting detective need them to incriminate someone else?"

The detective put down the paper. "For arranging to keep this thief out of prison, Mr. Treacher exacted a fee. One or two of the stolen articles was not handed over to the police, but left with the man who brokered the deal. Who had no intention of selling them, as you can see by the fact that the necklace has been in his possession for some months. When did you provide the information to Mr. Treacher? It was while I was in France, was it not?"

I sustained his gaze. "Yes. It was while you were in Nantes."

"If Mr. Daschle had chosen wisely, he would be alive, his privacy intact and he would be serving a higher purpose."

"That of lessening the charges against Mr. Henry Arbuckle?" I surmised.

"That of lessening the guilt of a Dr. John Watson for having provided very small details that helped one infraction wipe out another—Mr. Hugo Barrowman's for Mr. Henry Arbuckle's."

"How long have you known?" I asked simply.

"It took me a very long time to realize how deeply you abhorred the man. In the end, it was Treacher himself that told me."

"Treacher!" I couldn't bear my inner turmoil being discussed by the man.

"He reads faces, Doctor. Of course he knows how you feel about him, and he felt quite helpless to alleviate your conflict. I wish you had come to me, John."

"We have such different estimations of the man, I saw no point."

"That may be, but I have observed Mr. Treacher, and I do not believe he is malicious. He fixes things, yes, but was either Arbuckle or Barrowman hurt? Both of them faced very serious prison sentences. I myself sometimes find artful ways to resolve the unresolvable."

He looked down at his plate. "Last night we neither rehabilitated Mr. Arbuckle's reputation, nor did we keep young Percy alive. It was not my finest hour, but I pledge to you, Watson, that I will remove any misgivings you may have that you gave Mr. Treacher information with the idea of protecting me." He looked up. "Mr. Treacher will never ask you for anything again. You helped him several times, so you can see why he did not realize how much it upset you."

I breathed a sigh of relief. "I hope to have little to do with him from now on, then. Thank you, Holmes."

Of course, when Dougan and I became involved, I took the chit from Mr. Treacher. This was not on one, but on several occasions, so our link was renewed against my best efforts.


	5. Chapter 5

A little over a week after the men's ball hosted by Sherlock Holmes, a much larger group of men organized another ball especially for the same Mr. Holmes.

"It seems that many friends and acquaintances wish to express their gratitude for concluding this case so discreetly," Holmes remarked to me one day when I returned home from work.

I was surprised to find him there. The detective was taking a rest after a long investigation, and that meant time at the artist's den.

"Oh? Are they paying you in hashish?"

He tossed the envelope addressed to me in fine script, which matched the one in his hand.

"You and a guest are cordially invited to a ball,'" I read. "What, these people haven't had their fill of dancing?"

"No, Watson, none of our hosts will be there. The last time was for work, but this will be a pleasure. At least for me. Bruno has been in and out the past few days, and he promises to be my escort this weekend."

How could I deny my friend a social evening with his paramour? It would have been enough for me to see him relaxed and smiling, gliding around the room in Bruno's arms. "I shall be proud to watch my pupil moving lightly about the stable or wherever they put us."

"You most certainly cannot go alone, Watson. Bruno will think you're trying to get in the way."

Naturally, the person I chose to bring was Stanley. He had helped break the case, and he had been very kind to look after me when I was drunk past the point of all reason. It seemed likely that the retiring painter wouldn't wish to come, however.

Somehow, the evening had been planned for an abandoned section of a museum where the paintings were being moved around. There were some canvases leaned against walls but the effect was certainly more gracious than a warehouse. The four guests arrived separately through a side door that was left unlocked, and we found the string quartet already in place.

"Won't someone hear?" I whispered to Holmes.

"I believe the guard is a member of the guild, but you can relax, Watson. If we are caught they'll think we are art thieves."

So consoled, I peered into the candlelit space, thinking there must be a fifth member to our party.

But it turned out to be Stanley in his usual jacket, which looked a good bit cleaner than I remembered it. The impression didn't stop with clean, however. His hair was neatly combed into two long wheat-colored rivers on either side of his face. There was still the peasant blouse, this one embroidered with a colored thread, but he seemed to have found the waistcoat and trousers that matched the jacket.

There was no doubt that I was looking at the gentleman, and not the footman. Seeing that Stanley had managed to pull together all of his contradictory parts into a whole for our little evening was quite moving, actually.

He bowed and then stood there humbly, allowing himself to be looked at, and then he gestured to the dance floor.

"I only know how to dance the gentleman's part," I said to avoid some hideously embarrassing scene. But Stanley was not put off, and he gamely placed his arms in the passive role.

Surprisingly, the big man was very light on his feat, and he was able to follow my lead without much trouble, though we did tread on each other a few times.

"Now you," he said when the song was over.

"I could never," I said, backing away. He followed, grasping my hands in the correct position for him to take the lead.

"In my country dancing happens all the time," he directed to my ear. My partner began telling me stories about country dances, and before I knew it, the song was over.

"You are like me, Doctor. You do best when you think no one is watching."

We danced several more songs that way, and after a while it did not seem so unnatural to follow the lead of such a considerable frame.

Then we took a break to sip some of the champagne provided. We stood there watching Holmes and Bruno, who seemed to have lost all awareness of anything but the music and each other.

"Bruno is a very good dancer, though I can't think where he would have learned," I observed. "Holmes never reveals this side of himself except with Bruno."

"You're stronger than Mr. Holmes," Stanley said. He nodded at my surprise. "His man knows it, too. Otherwise he wouldn't let you live together."

"Let us live—but we've shared quarters for years. It was how they met."

"This Bruno has been marking his territory with me all night. Yes. An angry man, I think. You be careful, Dr. Watson. You see the best side of people. That is why you bring me here tonight."

Stanley's words of warning both touched and shocked me. I suddenly wished to reply in kind. "And you should stay away from Mr. Treacher. Mr. Holmes doesn't understand, but I wish you to mark me, Stanley. Never do a favor for that man or accept one from him."

"I do not like him. I take great care to only keep company with men I like," he smiled.

We looked over and saw Bruno sending a jealous look at both of us, but especially Stanley.

"Let us leave them alone. The musicians will surely tire soon anyway," my companion suggested.

I gave Holmes a goodbye gesture and we took our coats, and I my hat and walking stick, to slip single-file through the dark passage and outside. I offered my friend a cigarette and he offered me his flash. We smoked and drank, strolling in silence.

"Would you like to see my boat?" he asked suddenly. "There are not too many small vessels, usually only families live on the canal."

"I would, actually." It had been hard to picture him coming and going from his floating isolation. "It sounds rather romantic, though it must be very cold in the winter."

"I have a stove. It is very snug most of the time. Let me show you."

How could I refuse a chance to see where the mysterious Slav laid his head?

He hailed us a cab and we talked easily on the long ride. When he had alighted, my friend helped me navigate to rowboat that took us to the gently swaying vessel. We heard sounds of domestic squabbles and crying children from the other boats close by in this floating slum.

"It's not as peaceful as I imagined," I observed.

"I know how to make my own peace." He brought out an accordion and played a slow tune.

"You can do so many things, Stanley. Why do you not talk with others as you talk with me?" Many people had remarked on the man's transformation in my presence, but on most nights, on this night, I forgot that our rapport was in any way remarkable.

He put down the instrument. "I don't feel comfortable with most people. Special people are different." He took my hand in his and raised it to his lips.

The touch sent a wave of wrongness right through me. It was the most appallingly uncomfortable moment in my life. He kissed my hand as if I were a woman!

Stanley released my hand. "It is all right. Maybe your heart will see me here someday, maybe not. I am happy either way. Finding someone to love me, this I know how to do. But finding someone to love is much more difficult."

He took up a recorder and began playing.

I wanted to be gone from that place so urgently I considered jumping overboard.

He finished his song and stood up. He extended his hand and I was forced to take it to raise my stiff leg off the low stool. He got me ashore and found me a taxi. "You know where I live, Doctor. I like that very much."

I looked back and saw him watching my cab. The spectacle of that big mass of contradictions placidly watching me created a feeling of anything other than peace.

For some reason, I shed a tear in the cab going home. I understood then that the emotion that had almost had me jump into the canal was not repugnance so much as pity.

Other forms of distaste have some hope of being mitigated, but pity was irrevocable.

Many doctors suffer from an overproduction of pity. It was what made me unable to turn away Treacher and his blasted edema. It was what made people travel for miles in India to bring a dying child to me, specifically to me, because I would be unable to prevent myself giving a futile compress as a sort of last rite.

Through Holmes' work there was no shortage of miserable people for me to pity, but most often I delighted in a quality the sleuth produced in overabundance—a cool scientific interest in the bizarre. If Sherlock Holmes felt pity, I saw it only a handful of times. His work was quite a necessary escape from my professional and personal burden of someone sidling up to me with a hopeful glance, knowing that I could not turn away from their lumbago or their tale of romantic woe at a dinner party.

But the great detective often needed my sense of pathos, as well. Holmes supplemented my deficiencies, and vice versa, so perfectly that it's no wonder we worked together for so many years.

It does no harm for me to admit that my association with Holmes actually helped me in relation to women. There were ladies encountered through Holmes' cases with whom I corresponded long afterwards. These gentlewomen had gone abroad because of the threat of violence or scandal related to their case, but sometimes they would come to London and we had many a pleasant hour. With these select few, there was none of the paralysis I sometimes felt when I called upon a lady and had to be looked over by a mother seeking good blood to contribute to the family stock.

It was a lack of pretense, I came to think, that disarmed me. When I could find this with a lady—often one whom I had seen at her most desperate during a case—then we got along just as well as the men forced into low quarters with whom I shared a drink or a card game.

The lack of social expectations abroad was certainly what made my several love affairs possible. The first was in Afghanistan. It was not usual for an army doctor to treat civilians, particularly a woman in Muslim regions. But this was the wife of an important man and she insisted upon consulting me about some mysterious malady no other physician could solve.

In reality, she was an intelligent woman bored to death by her wealthy existence. She had some French, and so she spoke to me in that language, first of these palpitations she feigned, and then of many other things. None of her female attendants spoke French, you see, so my visits transpired through a curtain but with an unusual freedom. I never saw her face, but she had a lovely voice, and it was one of those situations when every obstacle only served to heighten our connection.

The first time I took her arm through the curtain and felt her pulse racing out of passion, it was one of the most erotic experiences I had ever had.

It was then that I decided that being a physician was only an asset in the realm of love.

The carriage was pulling up to Baker Street as I realized: all along I had been secretly considering what sort of neurological malady caused Stanley's odd behavior. Such scientific considerations had infected me from the beginning, and Holmes and I had discussed the subject several times as well.

As a medical man, it had been easy for me to see that there was a person in the midst of these strange habits. If not a congenital abnormality, it occurred to me that there also might be some sad story that caused him to flee from this homeland he never mentioned by name. It was my matter-of-fact way of treating him, as I would speak to anyone in my consultation room, that must have made him feel comfortable, and then more than comfortable with me.

It pained me to think that his genteel declaration to me was squandered on one who pitied.

Pity had put an end to my two most serious relationships in India. I had been willing to throw everything over for these native ladies and settle with them in the city where I had a promising practice.

The first girl's family betrothed her to someone else to prevent her from marrying me. She showed up at my quarters once, saying that we could continue seeing one another throughout her long engagement.

Her touch made me recoil. The pity I felt for a woman married away against her will was overwhelming.

The other young woman was very beautiful. I was at the point of proposing when I found out that there was nothing to fear from her family because they had urged her into becoming my lover. A marriage to an English doctor would solve all their financial difficulties.

I gave her some money on the condition that she never speak to me again. I pitied her so much it made me nauseous.

Holmes would be ending the night in his artist's den with Bruno, so I had the entire silent flat in which to pursue my reflections about this upsetting evening. Over a whiskey I realized that Stanley had not only aroused pity in me. I was angry with him.

I had never been so simple and assured when expressing my affections with women as he was with me. He had very gracefully thrown himself at my feet, and all this profession of love from the wrong person had awakened was a ferocious feeling of loneliness.

It occurred to me that I was never around women enough to have the chance to establish a relationship. I resolved to change that. At the very least, I wished to avoid a further piteous spectacle with Stanley. And I did seek out female company after that, here and there.

Because my first opportunity to have relations with a man aroused only negative emotions, I was quite sure such a thing was of no interest to me. It should be understandable why my relationship with Dougan developed so slowly that I didn't notice it.

Once my Mackie and I found a way to be together for part of the year, I never looked for anyone else.

There is a footnote to this strange affair. Nearly two years later I had the pleasure of experiencing my first raid.

It was an unusual night in that I came with neither Sherlock nor Dougan, with whom I had established periodic relations by this time. I had simply gone out in the hopes of hearing a jovial story or perhaps playing a hand of cards, much like I have gone out all my life.

The different company I now sought finally exacted a price.

After the exposure of Percy Daschle, the authorities were much less concerned with the existence of men's clubs—probably because no one else was so inclined to spend great amounts of time spying upon men with particular tastes.

The police were still little inclined to ignore two men found in flagrante in a public place. By default, then, Mr. Treacher's service was left alone as the best way to prevent such spectacles.

I never doubted that some part of Treacher's pacific little kingdom of sin had to do with strategic bribes. The exchange of funds between legal and illegal quarters bothered me not at all—but the exchange of favors sponsored by the odious little man bothered me a great deal. And yet, since I had started taking the chit, it seemed ludicrous to withhold my assistance to another member of this society to which I fully belonged, and I did help him from time to time.

But for whatever reason, the raid descended upon the second-floor café above Bristow's, a new nightspot for our kind—perhaps for insufficiently greasing the palms of the police.

I chose not to test Holmes' assurance that claiming to be on a case would solve any troubles. I ran as fast as my game leg would carry me, just like the other gentlemen scattering before the constabulary.

In one sense I did benefit from my status as Holmes' confederate. He had told me once about a large chink in a nearby building, some artifact of many years of reconstruction, where he had waited quite comfortably for a hour while the villains chasing him went back and forth cursing the name of Sherlock Holmes.

I stepped into this anomaly and watched the police scouring the area for yet another patron of a café I vowed never to step foot in again.

Long after they left I stood there shaking, not even wishing to think that they had given up the chase to wait for me over a cup of tea with Mrs. Hudson at Baker Street.

It was then that I remembered something Dougan had told me. "If you ever get into trouble, find Stanley."

I'd never considered needing to take the advice, but at the time it seemed to be about the big man's indisputable strength and isolated quarters.

I stepped from my hiding place and hailed a cab to take me most of the ways to the canal.

Out of prudence I walked the rest of the way in that dangerous neighborhood. Only when I got to the boat colony did I realize I hadn't thought about crossing to my friend's craft. I could see it, with its rowboat tied to the side, floating in the middle.

Laboring classes never sleep, thank goodness, and after standing there scratching my head for only a moment or two, a boat slid up to the shore.

"Are you looking for someone, gov'nur?" Several people called out lewd remarks about what a gentleman might be hoping to find in that vile neighborhood.

"Yes, I am looking for Stanley," I said with a firm voice that surprised me. "Would you be so good as to transport me? It's an emergency."

Thankfully, the big Slav seemed to enjoy a certain respect among his fellows. "By all means," the man said, and soon the boat was nudging up towards Stanley's small craft.

He came out in a nightshirt and then broke into a grin. "Doctor! You are most welcome."

The mention of my title cinched the matter, and I was conveyed to my friend's home without incident and very kindly helped to cross over.

"I'm so sorry to bother you, Stanley, but I wasn't sure it was safe to go home and I'm tired, so very tired."

It embarrassed me to think of it afterwards, but I'm afraid I shed a tear or two over my possibly lost honor while I described my nightmarish evening.

"There now. I'm sure that nothing bad will come of it. Drink this." He gave me some startlingly strong spirit in a mug. "Slowly. Now, did you know any of the policemen?"

"Not to speak to," I said upon reflection. "But many people know who I am from my writings. I regret being so open, now that I think of it."

"I like this about you," he said. Stanley took up a recorder and played while I finished the portion of liquor and then he put the mug to one side.

"I'm very glad I came to see you," I admitted. "I feel safe here."

"That's because I won't let anything happen to you." The strong hand at my back was exactly what I needed. "You've worn yourself out, Doctor. This time, I take care of you."

I dumbly watched him remove my boots. "You will take the bed. I am not tired."

He helped me stand up and settled me into the bed.

If it can be said that he bent down and kissed me, it is also true that my hands were in his hair.

To my shame, I didn't think of Dougan once during that deeply pleasurable night. All I thought of was what I needed—an animal reassurance that I was as I should be.

Stanley had a most delicate and thorough manner of reassuring me. Never has anything been so easy for me as to be comforted by him, first, and then awakened to something wilder.

During one moment of rest I said, "I'm so sorry for not seeing that we would fit so well together, Stanley. I was very rude when I ran off that night and you never spoke to me again."

"You wished to speak to me?" he said in surprise. "I was waiting for you to do so, but resolved not to importune you otherwise."

We laughed and became one in a dozen ways.

When he rowed me to shore he laid a hand on my face. "Come whenever you wish. Speak to me whenever you take the fancy. I am always here."

I stumbled my way to a likely spot for a cab and only when I got inside did my life crash down upon me: any law the police were trying to enforce was nothing compared to my breaking of the commitment I made to Mackie.

When I entered Baker Street, Holmes was still in his room, as it was very early. I bathed and changed clothes and came to join him at the breakfast table.

He made a choking sound and spilled most of his coffee cup on the tablecloth.

"I had thought the raid would have driven you into someone's arms, but I was mistaken about whose," he finally got out.

Since I knew that any possible scent or trace of my eventful evening had been washed down the drain, I merely sat there and let myself be inspected by Holmes' preternatural antennae.

He continued softly, "I once thought your situation quite unfair to you, but now I see that in this arrangement with Dougan, as in so many things, you were merely more wise than I."

I continued my breakfast. "There is no 'arrangement,' Holmes. Dougan simply told me to go to Stanley if I ever got into difficulty. Getting just a few feet away from the city was much appreciated after my hour in that nook you told me about. It was right there handy when I scurried away from Bristow's."

"Ah, the nook," he said vaguely. "Can it be that you don't know why Dougan would recommend you see Stanley in times of trouble? I don't think it would matter now to tell you, though I thought that you had put together some of the clues. At the time I was absolutely forbidden to mention it."

I laid down my toast. "What else is there to say about the big man you insist upon treating like a half-wit? He's good in an emergency."

"No, Watson. Do you realize that you just bedded the youngest crown-prince-in-waiting of the hereditary kingdom of Bohemia?"

It was my turn to spit out my coffee. This was the very royal family into which Holmes and I had investigated in our early days, in the case that introduced us to Irene Adler. We had been employed by the first in line for the throne.

"What? Bohemia? It's not possible. Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't he tell me?" I asked as I blotted my clothes. There were some similarities to their features, but the differences between the two men were more striking. Stanley was far more attractive and accessible, to begin with.

"Your Mr. MacLeod and I are probably the only men, other than the police, who know his true identity. Your lover, because he helped Stanley set up a bank account and recognized the couple of names he chose out of the dozen or so he possesses for his identity card. And I because I was not satisfied with several aspects of the story Stanley told us."

Strangely, I was more hurt that Stanley never confided in me than moved to see him in a different light. "What story?"

"Good heavens, Watson. Do you not remember him saying that he had 'talked his way out of' a few encounters with the police. No on is less likely to be articulate before the police. He is extremely protective of his home and for some reason refuses to take the chit from Treacher. He must go somewhere. Do you think he never has romantic encounters? Look at the man."

Evidently, Holmes had paid much closer attention to my friend than I'd imagined. "You're saying that he gets out of difficulty by mentioning his true identity?"

"Mycroft has always alluded to certain lists that are circulated among law enforcement. Nobles both domestic and foreign whose cases are to be handled by a discreet department, if they are to be handled at all. Your Stanislaus is on such a list."

"He's not mine," I said with a wistfulness that took me aback.

"Well, he was last night, so now I can finally tell you the rest of the case with Mr. Percy Daschle," Holmes said with an impatience of long standing. "Friend Stanley refused to collaborate unless I swore never to divulge his origins to you. He was concerned you would feel differently about him."

"And that was why you were in a hurry to get him to the police station," I remembered. "Was he really persecuted?"

"The man has no sense of what's going on around him!" my companion exploded. "Yes! Percy found numerous pretexts to worm his way into the theater. At one point an actor with whom Stanley exchanged a few words nearly had a set-piece dropped on his head. There are some men from the clubs—who have sworn me to secrecy—that received a discreet beating from this same lovesick young man. Percy was also responsible for bringing police attention to the canal community because he was jealous that they were on friendly terms with his erstwhile lover."

He made a helpless gesture to my surprise. "The lad was a walking menace, Watson. A man with a fantasy is one thing, but a policeman with a fantasy is something else. Anyone he imagined was a threat to his equally imaginary relationship was at risk. You above all!"

I was frozen in shock. "How did you piece all of this together?"

He sat back, abashed. "I would not have knit it together so well if the Yard did not discover a diary. It was a singularly detailed diary, which provided more evidence that the line between a promising young policeman and a highly disturbed mentality is perilously thin."

My friend described the contents of the diary, which the young man began after chancing upon Stanley's true identity when the nobleman was arrested for assisting at that play. Percy had some questionable emotions before then, but something about meeting a covert prince, and a prince who was very likely interested in men, opened the floodgates.

"Mr. Daschle was very aware that there was no possibility for living an open life, but instead of going to Treacher's like everyone else, he created a fantasy that his secret prince could make such a life possible for the two of them," Sherlock Holmes said. "The fantasy was very well-populated. You were lucky to escape with your life, Doctor. And Stanley with his."

"Me?" I pulled myself away from this tragic tale. "Stanley? Whatever do you mean?"

"I mean that you're one of the few men in London who enters Stanley's awareness. And this willful ignorance of his prolonged the investigation. You could have been shot at any time—the lad wrote about it in his diary. At length."

I slumped in my chair, suddenly queasy.

"Yes, we all had our blind spots at that time, did we not?" Holmes said gently. "Our adversary was so organized I didn't think such faculties could coexist with lunacy. Stanley was most concerned about keeping up his disguise with you. And you, well, Watson, you simply would not see the man who had such an inexplicable passion for you." He twinkled at me.

All of these revelations had exhausted me. I lit a cigarette and looked out to a morning that was irrevocably changed, but I wasn't sure if Stanley's title had anything to do with it.

Then a thought occurred to me. "Holmes, Stanley talks very differently than his older brother. I noted a distinctly Germanic accent in that case, whereas our prince is a Slav through and through."

My friend smiled. "The very point that kept me from the truth as well, Watson. The Bohemians are Slavs, but the ruling family owes most of its blood and customs to its Germanic streak. Your Stanley was mostly not brought up at court—hence the distinctly rustic dress and manners, his general handiness and strength, and the Slavic accent of the relations that raised him. But, just like his one dinner jacket, there is a layer of true gentility, such as one only acquires in the highest circles. This young man was hidden from public view since his speech impediment became apparent, though he was tutored as a prince, which explains his mastery over art and music."

"There is so little I know about him," I said, "And now I will never know more. As it is I will have to drag Dougan from wherever he is and confess what I've done."

"Do what you think is best, Doctor, but worry no more about the raid. I doubt the police recognized you, or I would have heard about it."

That stopped me from where I was moving to my coat. "How did you know about the raid? I thought you were halfway across town last night on the trail of a spy."

"So I was, Watson, but Mr. Treacher sent someone especially to Baker Street very early this morning to reassure me about your safety."

"Mr. Treacher?" With that sour note on my tongue, I spent some time tracking down my soon-to-be-ex paramour.

Since this was Adam's time, I had to wait many hours before I could see Mackie—probably more hours than necessary, with several extra imposed by Adam Fairlie to show how little he thought of my breaking our accord.

Dougan allowed me up into his quarters—a rare privilege. "John! I heard what happened last night. It must have been terrible for you."

His familiar embrace had my already raw emotions spilling out in no time. "I did what you said, Mackie, I went to see Stanley. Why did you never tell me he was a nobleman? And I was so glad to see a kind face. You must admit that he has the kindest face, Dougan. And then he gave me some vodka or I know not what, and then, I'm so sorry. If I'd been in my right mind I would never have done it."

Mackie had pulled us to the sofa and listened to me babble apologies for some time. "John. John," he tipped up my face that I had buried in his lap. "I'm very happy that you and Stanley, the covert prince, finally had your long-overdue evening."

"You are?"

"Yes. He and I came to an understanding some time ago."

"You did?" Suddenly my relief turned to anger. "You distributed my affections without consulting me?"

He kissed me. "The two of you are so obviously good together, I though it would be a wonderful experience for both of you." His eyes saw my confusion. "But I wished it to be something you both chose, as Stanley would have. I'm sorry that it happened when you were overwrought."

"But why would you wish to push me in the arms of another man?" This filled me with terror—I had no wish for Dougan to fob me off on someone else.

"Because you have been so patient about my relation with Adam that I worry about you being alone. You are the sort of man who shouldn't be alone, John. And because—" he broke off.

"Because why?" No more revelations could shock me, at this point.

"Because I hoped you would tell me about it." He shook his head. "Perhaps there was some selfishness on my part. I do so like it when you tell me things." He whispered. "Hearing a decent man share indecencies is one of my favorite pastimes with you."

It was my turn to tip his head so his eyes were facing mine. "It was unspeakable, Dougan," I said with a catch in my voice.

My friend looked stricken. "My only wish was to—"

I held a finger to his lips. "But I shall find a way to put into words the most secret, most delightful arts in which Stanley schooled me last night."

He bit his lip.

And so one more pleasurable petal unfurled for us. Mackie only wished my complete happiness, and for me to share with him every thought and feeling.

As time went on, he sometimes witnessed these enchanting evenings with Stanley, although Dougan scrupulously avoided touching him. It was out of respect for Adam, of course, but this discipline was also a recognition that this was for me, a gift for my never questioning his arrangement.

I saw Stanley regularly, at times. Other times, when he was in one of his black moods or when a show took up all his time, he let it be known he was unavailable. He contacted me with notes in his exquisite script. To the casual observer, we must have seemed like no more than friends, a kindly doctor coaxing a shy man into speech.

But in reality, it was Stanley who coaxed me. The prince patiently divested me of a lifetime of loneliness. Who knows why he needed to love so—he told me very little of his upbringing, and what little he shared led me to believe it was quite painful for a noble boy to be afflicted with a speech impairment, and what I had decided was a complete allergy to pretense. He had no contact with his close relations, that I knew of, and I suspect they wanted little to do with this oddity who had promised so much with the arts and then had been so disappointing in every other way.

I believe that Dougan, in his infinite wisdom, had seen how much Stanley and I could give each other and was truly happy to make this happen. For I discovered that Mackie had been Stanley's protector for some time. A big man, a foreigner and an eccentric—even without his romantic leanings, Dougan decided Stanley needed looking after.

Mackie had been the director who'd unearthed the mute's ability to play violin. And Mackie had helped to get him released from jail, not realizing that the prince's special status would soon have accomplished this anyway. So it was only natural that my friend would do something to alleviate Stanley's solitude.

The reader must think that this unconventional arrangement was shocking to the extreme. But I assure you—there were three no less licentious men in the city. We could have turned away this cup, but instead we drank from it deeply and found we never came to the bottom of it.


End file.
